Written by Tim Hassall, Head of Risk & Compliance
It was a Tuesday evening at 19:51 when my phone rang. I remember the day as clearly as yesterday, even though it was over fifteen years ago.
It was a member of my management team who was running the business that evening.
“Hi Tim, I am afraid I have some bad news”
My stomach churned a little as I sensed panic in him, I asked him to proceed.
“We have just sold alcohol to a sixteen year old boy….”
It was a test purchase by the police, we had just sold a bottle of lambrini to a minor!
My stomach churned and I felt sick.
My mind began to run with who, what, why, and of course HOW!
I don’t remember the entire conversion but I bombarded the manager with question after question.
He stopped me with a single sentence: “The police want you to come to work now”
I needed to buy myself some breathing space I thought, so I replied, “no I will be in at 7am as scheduled.” I fibbed telling him my wife was out and I couldn’t leave the kids.
I instructed my colleague to say no more to them and politely inform them that I would arrange to see them first thing Wednesday morning. Our call ended.
However my brain was only just firing up.
I worked for a large company at the time, so I contacted The Emergency Control room. I explained what had occurred and they promised to cascade as necessary.
I arrived at work just before 7am, having not slept much, as my mind was churning over and over, thinking what control did I have in place and how had this occurred?
As the clock turned to 7am I was promptly arrested, told I didn’t have to say anything etc and taken to the local police station. It was at this point I thought ah s**t this is real. I was cautioned again on booking in and then placed in a cell.
I was the license holder, the buck stopped with me.
At around 9:30 I was removed from the cell and placed in a meeting room where I met my solicitor assigned by the company. He asked about last night’s occurrence and what had been said this morning. I informed him I had not said anything yet!
“Good, you won’t be answering any questions today.” he explained, “we will only answer questions that are put to the company in writing and we will respond within 7 days.”
I had found a friend and an ally.
I was released pending investigation and potential prosecution.
By 10:30 I was sitting back in work on the phone to my superiors who made it totally clear that if I had done my job and followed policy and process they would back me 100%. However if it turned out I hadn’t, I would be free food to the press, police and crown prosecution services.
My own investigation started and I lay the facts down here.
The business had me as the licence holder.
The manager in charge that evening had a personal licence to sell alcohol.
The cashier that sold the alcohol was a minor, he was 17 years of age and too young to sell it unsupervised.
We had a supervisor managing that cashier that evening and he was on a till in front of the supervisors workstation.
It turned out the supervisor in charge of the checkouts that evening was the cashier’s Mother.
It turned out the purchaser of the alcohol was a high ranking police officer’s son.
There was absolutely no doubt we had breached the terms of the Premises Licence, the personal licence of the duty manager in charge at the time and I was in breach of company policy. I was facing prosecution and dismissal from work.
It was now time for me to prove I had done everything possible to prevent this from occurring. I spoke to my legal team and they informed me I was looking for a due diligence defence.
My investigations to seek beyond the fact of selling alcohol to a 16 year old had begun.
The cashier had joined at 16, they had a young person risk assessment completed. They had been correctly inducted with the appropriate training. They had begun working on the sales floor and after 6 months of good work had been checkout trained.
This training was well documented and the checkout manager had completed a full induction process to checkouts including the operation of a till. The fact they needed supervision to sell age restricted products was signed by the checkout manager and the colleague. There was signed, dated and assessed evidence of ‘Think 21’ which we operated at the time.
Think 21:- if you were lucky enough to look under the age of 21 we would ask for photographic evidence to prove you were over the legal age of 18 to purchase alcohol as an example.
The cashier had successfully passed all training and had indeed been witnessed following correct procedures.
Attention turned to his Mum, the supervisor. She had been correctly trained and all documentation was available to prove this. She had good observation examples of being good at her job and had been observed numerous times supervising the sales of age restricted products for minor cashiers.
So why did it go wrong? I watched CCTV for many sessions to understand what had occurred.
The cashier engaged with the minor, looked up to see the supervisor was busy with a customer and made a decision for himself. He scanned the bottle of Lambrini without a supervisor present. He didn’t ask for ID. This human being had stitched me up by not following his procedures.
Did I have enough to defend myself?
I contacted my legal team and was alarmed when I was informed No you will still face prosecution!
I dug deeper and thought of what controls I had in place:
- I had a premises licence and was a personal licence holder (plh)
- My management were plhs
- My licence was on display
- I had CCTV across the premises that was manned by security
- I had customer signage next too all age related products
- I had the BWS area supervised during trading hours
- All staff had been think 21 trained including security watching cctv with refresher training and this was documented every 12 months – with 3 year of records
- All cashiers had documented training to operate a till and All passed the assessment and had been signed off by the checkout manager – with 5 years of records
- All age related products had a system control ,then when scanned the checkout out itself demanded THINK 21 , have you checked the age. The cashier has to override this by pressing enter to say they have.
- I had test purchase records for every checkout signed off daily by the I/c manager and weekly by myself as store manager. The records were available for 3 years. I was able to show positive testing, negative errors where we believed a challenge should have been made. The records included no ID, no sale. It showed where myself or my deputy had been called by the customer and we had documented no ID, no sale and backed the cashier
- We had letters of over 5 years of test purchases that we had passed from the council and the police
- We had posters in toilets and on notice boards of ‘Think 21’
However, we had still sold alcohol to a minor, I can not argue that, but did I the licensee deserve prosecution?
The cashier unfortunately had not got a supervisor to sell the alcohol, had over ridden the till prompt, failed to document it in the age related sales records and had simply not followed the process or procedure. Be it a brain burp and a moment in time or a deliberate violation, I guess we will never know.
My Actions:
- The cashier left, yep ok I sacked them
- I retrained the supervisors
- I removed all underage cashiers with immediate effect to the sales floor and ceased recruitment of minor for tills
- I retrained and relicensed all Personal Licence Holders
- Think 21 moved corporately to Think 25
What Happened To Me?
The police wrote questions and we turned them around every 48 hrs with answers and evidence for at least 4 months.
A private prosecution was raised against me by the father of the kid we sold to. The company I worked for stood shoulder to shoulder with me and support me with both cases.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) took a year to close the cases with no action recommended as we had a due diligence defence that stood up to scrutiny.
I went to Ireland to spread Best practice.
I can honestly say it was an exhausting year, but I had shown that we had a process, we had procedures, we had a process of review, and assessment in place. Just one employee decided to do it his way.
What else could I have reasonably done to prevent this from occurring?
I had Due Diligence thankfully
But what if I hadn’t ?
The consequence of not having layers of control is far reaching. In this instance if I had been unsuccessful in my defence what would have been the potential outcome?:
- Dismissal from the company
- Loss of funding for lifestyle with family
- Loss of integrity and trust
- Impact on personal self worth and mental health
- Prosecution of Company for breaching licence
- Prosecution of myself due to private prosecution from the police
- Brand damage
- Media coverage
- Loss of Licence for store and self
- Long term unemployment
If we take this away from licensing into Health and Safety and Fire, the consequence of an employee not following the process or procedures is very real with much further reaching consequences than selling wine to a minor.
Was I Lucky?
Imagine your colleague fails in mandatory checks or does not report correctly or follow the process/procedure. Imagine somebody gets hurt, suffers life changing injuries or even death. Its riddor reportable. Either the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or Environmental Health Officers ( EHO) are coming to visit and investigate.
How would your processes, procedures and/or controls protect or hinder you?
No defence = Unlimited fines and Potential Prison sentences, and then civil claims due to your failure in duty of care.
