Agenda and minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

To agree the minutes of the Committee meeting held on 25 October, 2022 and the Sub-Committee hearings held on 10 October and 8 and 15 November 2022

The minutes of the Committee meeting held on 25 October 2022 and the Sub-Committee (Hearings) held on 10 October and 8 and 15 November 2022 were agreed and signed as true records.

Report of the Director of Streetscene and Regulatory Services

The Committee considered a report of the Director of Streetscene and Regulatory Services which provided information on the legislative powers to enable fee setting for skin piercing registration.

The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 requires the person who carries out the practice of skin piercing to register the premises where the skin piercing business operates. Under the provisions of the Act, local authorities may determine reasonable fees for the registration of skin piercing activities. This gave Councils the power to set their own local fees that would enable it to recover reasonable costs.

The City Council is required to register certain activities that require the puncturing of the skin for cosmetic purposes or acupuncture (this did not include the treatment by a qualified medical practitioner). The purpose of the registration was to ensure satisfactory standards of hygienic practice and business management were met to minimise risk to the client and the operator.

When a needle, razor or other similar instrument breaks a person’s skin, blood, serum or small fragments of tissue adhere to the instrument used. These could then be directly transferred to the blood stream of another person or could contaminate materials or other pieces of equipment and potentially enabling infection to be transmitted. Therefore, it was imperative that adequate controls are in place.

Skin piercers must also comply with all relevant health and safety legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 as well as complying with any associated byelaws made by the Local Authority.

The City Council formally adopted a set of skin piercing byelaws in 1983 that set hygienic standards for skin piercing. Between 1983 and 2007, the byelaws were updated several times to take account of new skin piercing techniques such as body piercing and semi permanent skin colouring.

Over recent years, the number of applications to register skin piercing premises had risen dramatically from 9 applications in 2014/15 to 68 in 2019/20. So far this year 34 applications had been received and processed and over the course of the year, application numbers were likely to reach pre pandemic levels.

The skin piercing regime and fees charged had not been reviewed since 2007 and as a result, the current registration fee would not cover the administration costs; therefore, it was proposed to increase the fee charged for registering premises and introduce other local fees to enable cost recovery. The proposed fees were attached as Appendix 1 of the report and benchmarking data was attached as Appendix 2 of the report.

RESOLVED that, the Licensing and Regulatory Committee:

1.  Approves the proposed fees for:

(a)  Applications to register premises to undertake the practice of skin piercing and

(b)  Applications to register individuals, vary applications and other skin piercing services not previously charged for.

2.  Delegates authority to the Strategic Lead for Regulation to conduct an annual review of the fees and, where appropriate, amend if necessary.

There were no outstanding issues to report.

There were no other items of business.