Issue - meetings

Report of the Service Director, Legal and Governance requesting that the Licensing Committee determine which of the four applications for the Large Casino Licence provides the ‘greatest benefit’ to Southampton and which Applicant should be awarded the ‘Provisional Statement’, attached.

The Committee considered the confidential report of the Service Director, Legal and Governance, in accordance with the Local Government Act 1972 Section 100A(4), requesting that the Licensing Committee determine which of the four applications for the Large Casino Licence provides the ‘greatest benefit’ to Southampton and which Applicant should be awarded the ‘Provisional Statement’.

RESOLVED:

(i)  that the following decisions be approved and notified, as agreed at the meeting, to all applicants in writing after the meeting;

(ii)  the Committee has decided to grant the provisional statement to Aspers, whose quantitative score under the Evaluation Criteria and Scoring Matrix was very significantly above the second placed applicant, and whose bid the Committee qualitatively considered to be head and shoulders above the others; and

(iii)  accordingly, the applications by Global Gaming Ventures (Southampton) Limited, Grosvenor Casinos Limited and Kymeira Casinos Limited are rejected. 

DECISION

Introduction

1.  This is the decision of the Licensing Committee in relation to the application for a provisional statement for a large casino at Watermark West Quay.

2.  The provisional decision to grant the application for a provisional statement, colloquially known as the “Stage 1 grant”, was made on 4^th September 2014. This decision, known as the “Stage 2 decision”, is the final decision to grant a provisional statement, following a competition between the Stage 2 entrants, Aspers Universal Limited (“Aspers”), Kymeira Casino Limited (“Kymeira”) which applied on the same site at the Royal Pier Waterfront Development), Grosvenor Casinos Limited (“Grosvenor”) whose site is at Leisureworld, West Quay, and Global Gaming Ventures (Southampton) Limited (“GGV”) which has applied at Watermark West Quay, Southampton.

3.  The Committee wishes to thanks all participants for the quality of their bids and their responsiveness and co-operation during what has been a long and exhaustive process.

4.  Within the bounds of confidentiality, this decision sets out the reasons for the result just stated.

The legal test

5.  The overriding legal test set out in Schedule 9 paragraph 5(3)(a) of the Gambling Act 2005 (“the Act”) which requires the Committee “to determine which of the competing applications would, in the authority’s opinion, be likely if granted to result in the greatest benefit to the authority’s area.”

6.  In accordance with the Secretary of State’s Code of Practice for Determinations under Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Schedule 9 to the Gambling Act 2005 relating to Large and Small Casinos the Council as licensing authority published the principles they proposed to apply in making the Stage 2 determination, which were embodied in the Evaluation Criteria and Scoring Matrix.

7.  As well as scoring the proposals according to the scoring mechanism set out in that document, the Committee has also asked itself which of the competing applications would be likely if granted to result in the greatest benefit to the authority’s area. This produced the same conclusion. In both cases, the conclusion was unanimous.

Disregards

8.  Section 210 of the Act requires the Committee to disregard whether or not a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14