The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
The Government have worked hard to meet the challenging deadline laid down by the Small Business Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, and bring the pubs code into force by 26 May 2016.
Good progress has been made. The Government published draft regulations and a consultation in two parts on 29 October and 4 December 2015. The consultation closed on 18 January, and Government published a response document and laid regulations on 14 April 2016.
Since laying the pubs code regulations, we have identified a small number of technical drafting errors.
It is important to get the pubs code right for both tenants and pub-owning businesses. Therefore the Government withdrew the regulations yesterday in order to deal with these errors. This means that the pubs code will not be in force by the 26 May as previously set out.
The Government will address the technical drafting issues with the regulations quickly and re-lay amended regulations as soon as possible, minimising the delay bringing the code into force. The regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure, and so Parliament will have an opportunity to debate the content and give the regulations full scrutiny.
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