SCOTTISH LICENSING
challenging. If the authority gives one reason for its decision but seeks to rely on substantially different reasons once the matter reaches court, the appellant is no longer dealing with the decision that was actually communicated to them.
The court has also made clear that this does not mean licensing authorities must produce something resembling a formal stated case. In Loosefoot Entertainment Ltd v City of Glasgow District Licensing Board, the court recognised the importance of the reasons given by the decision-maker while also making clear that the decision-maker simply needs to make the basis of the decision clear.
The two principles therefore sit together. The reasons must be sufficiently clear to explain the decision, but they do not have to be unnecessarily elaborate.
When detailed reasons still aren’t enough
There is another useful illustration in Black v Midlothian Council (2016). This is another case involving a taxi driver’s licence under the 1982 Act. In that case, the licensing committee had provided a relatively detailed account of the matters before it. The problem, though, was that the reasons did not adequately explain how the matters considered by the committee led it to the conclusion that the appellant was not a fit and proper person to hold a licence. The Sheriff applied the Wordie test and remitted the matter for reconsideration.
That case is useful because it demonstrates that good reasons are not necessarily the same thing as long reasons. A committee can record a considerable amount of information and still leave the reader asking the most important question. Why did those matters lead to this decision?
Why this matters in practice
There is an understandable temptation, particularly after a contentious hearing, to treat the written reasons as an administrative task to be completed afterwards. The committee has reached its decision, the meeting is over and the paperwork simply records what happened. However,
the above cases demonstrate why that approach can be problematic.
The written reasons are not merely a transcript of the hearing. They should identify the basis of the decision that the authority has actually made. If a committee has considered several matters but only some of them are material to its decision then the reasons should make that clear. If a particular piece of evidence is
PHTM NOVEMBER 2026
important to the conclusion then the reasons should explain its significance. If the decision turns on a fit and proper assessment then the reasons should explain how the matters relied upon lead to that conclusion.
That does not require a committee to write like a court, but it does require the decision to be intelligible.
This is also why Kinnear remains relevant more than three decades later. The case is a reminder that the appeal process is not an opportunity for a licensing authority to reconstruct its decision after the event. The Sheriff is considering the decision that the authority actually made, not a new decision developed through the council’s answers to an appeal.
A practical safeguard for the trade
There is, therefore, a practical lesson here for anyone representing a licence holder or applicant before a licensing committee. That is, read the written reasons carefully. Do they actually explain why the decision was made? Do they identify the material matters relied upon? Do they explain the connection between those matters and the statutory test? Or, do they simply repeat phrases such as “not fit and proper” or “in the interests of public safety” without explaining what led the committee there?
If the reasons are unclear then that may matter on appeal. The courts have made clear that adequacy of reasons is not a cosmetic issue. It goes to the ability of the licence holder, and ultimately the court, to under- stand and scrutinise the decision. None of this means that every imperfectly drafted decision will automatically be unlawful. The courts have repeatedly recognised that the adequacy of reasons is a matter of substance and context rather than a test of literary perfection. However, there is an important difference between a concise explanation and an unexplained conclusion.
The lesson from Wordie, Ritchie, Kinnear and Black is, therefore, relatively straightforward. A licensing committee does not need to write a judgment, but it does need to explain its decision clearly enough that the licence holder and the court can understand what the decision was based upon. For a licensing system that can determine whether someone is allowed to continue working, that is not an unreasonable expectation.
The hearing may end when the committee leaves the room, but for the purposes of an appeal, the reasons the authority puts on paper may be where the real scrutiny begins.
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