PROPOSALS to reduce the number of licensing categories and update the decades old alcohol laws have been welcomed by the Jersey Hospitality Association.
Appearing at an Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel hearing yesterday, Ana Calvani, co-chief executive of the Jersey Hospitality Association with her husband Marcus, said reducing the amount of licensing laws for hospitality establishments would open opportunities for new businesses to open, as the licensing laws would be more straight-forward.
She said that the existing 1974 law is “limited” and that a streamlined licensing process would allow business-owners to understand the requirements.
There are currently seven different types of alcohol licenses in place, but this would be reduced to three – on-trade, off -trade and temporary events – under proposals lodged by Economic Development Minister Kirsten Morel.
During the hearing, Mr Calvani added: “There’s bizarre situations where hotels have to shut certain doors and not allow people in certain corridors, because one section is licensed differently from another. I operated a business myself with four licences, just because we had to in order to trade.”
Mrs Calvani added: “We feel the current system is broken within its 1974 framework – there are seven rigid licence categories. This process is expensive, slow, overly logistic, and we feel it’s not aligned with the modern hospitality models in 2026.”
