CERTIFICATE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN LICENSING LAW AT WARWICK UNIVERSITY

One of the routes to obtaining full membership of the Institute of Licensing is to hold the Certificate of Higher Education in Licensing Law or an equivalent qualification. 

The Certificate is currently offered by the School of Law at the University of Warwick, one of the leading law schools in the UK.  Its teaching was rated as ‘excellent’ in its last Teaching Quality Assessment by the Higher Education Funding Council for England and it achieved a 5 rating for international excellence in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise.

Certificate of Higher Education in Licensing Law

The Certificate of Higher Education in Licensing Law commences each year in September and is provided through Warwick Legal Training.

Led by the UK’s first Professor of Licensing Law, Professor Colin Manchester, the course offers a first class programme on major aspects of licensing law.   

The Certificate is available only as a part-time programme studied over two years. It is studied primarily through distance learning, but with the addition of two residential weekend sessions each year, running from Friday afternoon through to Sunday afternoon, which take place in Warwick’s award-winning Conference Park facilities.

The first residential session is in September at the beginning of each year of the course and the second one is in March/April. The distance learning is delivered via the medium of the Internet, so it is essential that students have Internet access. A specially designed website is used, from which there is access to course materials, Discussion Board facilities, email and legal databases.

The course is aimed primarily at licensing officers working in local government and applicants are normally expected to have a minimum of 12 months’ experience working in licensing or a related field. However, the course is eminently suitable for others with an interest in licensing, such as police licensing officers, councillors and magistrates.

Those studying the course should expect to devote a minimum of six hours’ study each week to the course and the opportunity for acquisition of good legal skills should be significantly enhanced if provision can be made by employers for some study allowance for those undertaking the course.

Why study this course?

The benefits of studying the course include:

• The opportunity to acquire, in the context of licensing law, the same legal skills and techniques as students who study for a law degree before going on to qualify as solicitors or barristers. This will enable those studying the programme to have a proper understanding of the relevant statutory provisions on licensing law and how these are or might be interpreted by courts
• A better understanding of the legal framework within which licensing decisions are made, including the principles of natural justice, constraints on the exercise of statutory powers and the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998
• The further development of increasingly important IT skills that can be shared with colleagues
• Access to the University’s library and information technology facilities, including a wide range of legal databases to which the University subscribes
• Where those studying the programme are involved in the decision-making process, an improvement in the quality and consistency of decision-making and an improved level of service to licence applicants (and their legal advisors), local residents and Members of the Council

The benefits of obtaining the Certificate of Higher Education in Licensing Law qualification include:

• Possession of a university qualification of recognised standing at an academic level equivalent to first year degree standard demonstrating a high level of ability and a professional level of competence in licensing
• providing a degree of comparability with professional qualifications in other fields giving greater confidence when dealing with other professional personnel
• Improved prospects for career advancement to more senior positions, either in local authority licensing or other fields, for which a high level of educational attainment is expected. It is becoming increasingly common for advertisements for positions in licensing to require as necessary or desirable a qualification in licensing
• The acquisition of transferable skills that can be employed not only in licensing but also in other fields such as clarity of oral and written communication, analysing material (e.g. dealing with complex facts, bringing together relevant information and judging what is relevant and irrelevant), evaluating material (e.g. assessing arguments) and appreciating the legal implications when making decisions and recommendations
• Qualification for membership of the Institute of Licensing without the need to demonstrate professional competence