We are delighted to announce the development of the ECINS Licensing Assessment Tool which was launched at the Multi-Agency Management of Licensed Premises Presentation on 29th May 2013 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Representatives from Norfolk and Suffolk Constabularies, Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Suffolk Licensing were in attendance to see how the system would enable them, the Licensing Authorities and their partners to successfully ‘manage’ and risk assess licensed premises in a multi-agency environment.

Police in Fenland, Cambridgeshire have been using ECINS for some time to case manage all their medium and high risk licensed premises and to share information with their partners such as the Fire Service, Environmental Health, Council and Trading Standards. We have worked closely with the Cambridgeshire team to further develop the system so that practitioners can carry out automatic risk assessments, saving them time and money.

How Does it Work?

First you create a licensed premises as a “case” on ECINS and upload relevant information such as the size of the premises and license information including documents. Reports can then be uploaded giving details about specific incidents including the offence, intervention and any intelligence. The information you provide automatically generates a risk assessment score for each report e.g. ‘Homicide/life threatening injury = 6 points. ECINS automatically calculates the cumulative report scores for the premises over the past 6 months which dictates if the premises is currently regarded as high, medium or low risk.

The premises gallery on ECINS allows you to quickly view all your licensed premises at a glance and filter it geographically, by premises and by current risk assessment rating. The licensing tool also saves you time by creating statistics and graphical information on your licensed premises including risk assessment trends, charts, graphs and tables based on areas, premises types and individual premises.

Because there are no user licenses you can choose to share or restrict selected licensed premises information with other agencies on ECINS and you can task other agencies regarding the premises too, choosing to receive action related notifications on your selected premises if you wish.

ECINS’ Graham Mansbridge said “Before we developed this tool, practitioners told us they were creating their own risk assessments using Excel Spreadsheets and then having to pull it all together. The ECINS Licensing Tool Risk Assessment is carried out in real time based upon an actual live incident. Having this tool in place encourages a proactive approach from licensees which can help them reduce their risk score based on improved management of their licensed premises. Having ECINS automatically carry out the assessment and score it and then create trends and statistical data will also save practitioners a considerable amount of time and money.”