Regulated usually by local councils. licensing and registering certain types of business activities. Our panel licence legal experts can tell you whether you need a licence, help you apply for one and tell you and give you an indication of how long the process may take. There can be issues and specific regulations surrounding the transfer of licences and as such you are best to seek expert advice. The art in any licence acquisition or transfer is to get the timing right. The existence of a valid licence is vital to the function of any business and as such you must make provision to the licence in place. To do this you need a firm understanding of the timeings and the process to ensure that your business does not suffer any down time.
Most licences are approved via the local authority and as such they have a set meeting time to approve any changes. Your licencing expert will provide a greater understanding of the hurdles to be overcome and factor this into the wider business context that the licence will function in. A licence tends to be only one part of the operational business and as such rarely can be considered in isolation.
In some cases you will also require to have valid certification and training in place as part of the licence process. For example if your business deals in food, Food Standards Scotland requirements will have to be taken into consideration. Our panel lawyers can help provide advice for new food businesses; safety and regulation information – including food law codes of practice, food incidents, labelling and legislation; industry-specific advice – including catering and retail, manufacturing and farming. On a final point at this stage you are best to consider that many licences are person specific not business specific so choosing who holds the licence is very important. If this is an employee a back contract may be prudent to ensure that the business is not open to un-due employee pressure.
