Licensing fees to increase?

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ExSCA

ShootClay Admin
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Jan 27, 2011
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An Early Day Motion (1161) has been submitted in the House of Commons that calls for a significant increase in licensing fees. No amount is mentioned, but the reference to £196 costs does indicate the kind of increase they are aiming for:

That this House urges the Government to increase the firearms licence fee to eliminate the £17 million burden placed upon police services to subsidise private gun ownership; notes that the current fee stands at £50 while its costs the police £196 to process each private gun licence; further notes that police services across the country are facing severe financial pressures resulting in a reduction in the number of frontline and specialist police officers; agrees that every measure possible should be taken to protect funding for vital police work; and acknowledges that when the Government is imposing extensive public spending reductions it is unacceptable to use funding earmarked for policing to subsidise an activity by a small minority of the British public.
Thirty Five signatures have been collected so far - however, this does not mean law is changing or fee's are changing - and this may never reach debate, but it is interesting news. 

The details and signatories are here : http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/business-papers/commons/early-day-motions/edm-detail1/?session=2013-14&edmnumber=1161

I have my own personal opinion - but I'll leave to the fine members of the forum to debate....

Edit - this is how an Early Day Motion works : http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/business/edms/

 
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For that sort of increase id want my renewal back within 24hrs!! How can they justify that sort of hike?!!

 
I posted a lot on this threat on the Old Site when i was on the Board ...and on this site after leaving the Board.....explaining how I also was a member of the Whitehall committee BSSC who fights constantly for our Firearms protection.....and just hw serious a threat this was.

No one was interested at the time.....like the rest of the politics.....and I was slammed (by those who thought they were experts) at the time :laugh:

Well....it is all coming home to roost now.

Higher licence fees and medical tagging were the two things that I said were the biggest danger to shooting sports. We are about to have both put in Law.

But.....never mind folks.....we all just want to shoot.....!

:wink:

And.....further....those with the wider knowledge of shooting sports and the passion for the sport.....have now all walked away...! You are left with 'non-specific, non-shooting, government placed bods'.......... :wink: Enjoy..!

 
Don't see it as an issue , for most of us I would suggest a SGC is a luxury item as is an 8k gun...£200 every 5 years ..I'd pay it without complaint.if it does cost that for processing then fair enough.

 
Ok so we are a minority, other minorities get special treatment of the positive kind, we just get persecuted! I'm sure there must be a way making the system more efficient, this may then save the police some money. OK £50 is not a bad fee seeing how long a ticket runs for, but I cannot see how it costs so much for the police to issue a ticket! Could be a case of too much red tape.

 
No doubt if it goes this way it will be an end to waiting months for renewal and grants.yer right.:)

 
Don't see it as an issue , for most of us I would suggest a SGC is a luxury item as is an 8k gun...£200 every 5 years ..I'd pay it without complaint.if it does cost that for processing then fair enough.
It does not bother me either....i live to shoot.....and therefore pay what ever it costs......even if it was £1000 each time.....but as I explained before on previous threads....a cost change is not the point.....it is a political principle being changed....they are wanting to link it to the cost of policing firearms issues (big open circle) and not as it is now.....cost related to time taken to process the licence.

You should see how much they were proposing that the RFD was going up to.

It is like giving an open cheque when you change (in Law) the political principle on the cost charging.

It is all academic really because it will happen sooner or later. Glad to see people relaxed about it.

 
yup, £40/yr or £3.34/month or 77p/wk is small beer compared to the cost of shotguns, club/syndicate memberships, cartridges &etc, if you're worried about it going out in one lump sum then open a savings account and put so much away each month/wk to help defray shooting costs.

 
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Don't see it as an issue , for most of us I would suggest a SGC is a luxury item as is an 8k gun...£200 every 5 years ..I'd pay it without complaint.if it does cost that for processing then fair enough.
The money is not an issue for me personally so if it goes that way then so be it.

However please don't assume that everyone has an £8k gun and its an easily affordable luxury.  There are a lot at the bottom end for whom this will be a hardship and I daresay that there will be a number of people who give up shooting as a result.  For any shooter it should be an anathema to us all if that happens and we should fight it.

The background reason to the licence is for the protection of the public from the occasional nutcase and so that the powers that be know who has guns.  This is a legitimate police cost and not one that should necessarily be borne by the licensee.

For one thing I would expect any medical reports to have to be included in any increased fee.  The calculations as to how this figure has been arrived at need to be audited.

The shooting organisations need to make a stand against this!

 
The £196 seems excessive on the face of it. Depends how they work it out. You can get an accountant to absorb enough police overheads to make it look justified I suspect.

But as several have said, it's small beer in an annual budget for a competition shooter. It might just make somebody who barely uses a gun give up. The main issue here is that is a near 400% rise, which always raises attentions. If it had always been £40 per year, nobody would blink.

 
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Whilst I agree that it would be a negative to have anything that pushes people out of this sport I would have to say that the one thing I have learned in my short time is that it is not a poor mans game, like numerous other pastimes we don't (by definition of shooting 'clays' rather than this forum being called 'shootinvarmintsorfmoilaaaahnd' ) need to shoot, or spend vast amounts of money on the accoutrements that let us do so, but we do therefor the people this affects this way would be minimal.

If we wish guns for sport and there is a fee involved in listing people who wish to have guns, I see no problem in charging said people ,I disagree that it is a legitimate police cost to cater for someones hobby.

:)

 
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Yes its begger all cost wise when you compare it to overall shooting cost however i think the point is give them an inch and they may take a mile.

I don't understand the politics but if tinker says its an issue then that is good enough for me

 
If it really is a £17m shortfall, then it's an easy win to up it to cover it and probably should be. Maybe shooters have got off lightly with regards to licensing over the years (from a cost point of view). £50 is a very small amount to pay these days and I was amazed when I found out it covered me for 5 years when I first started shooting. Try paying professional registration fees/membership fees. I think I pay £363 per year just to be registered as a Physio and have MCSP after my name....

And to be fair, it is only a few quid more than 1 reg comp per year..

 
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I said I didnt mind the potential rise last time this came up and got flamed.

Its not a great deal of loot, why give the anti gun lobby more ammo.

"Pays ya dues and keep 'em off ya backs" (said in a pirate fashion in my head..............)

 
One slab of cartridges per year.  No biggie.

As for the principle of a change to the law, what would we do about it?  What COULD we do about it?  In a democracy, the majority win, the minority bitch about their lot in life.  Even if we were to get all SGC holders together and united - which would NEVER happen - there are half a million of us, and we would... ummm... what would we do??  Write a stern letter to our MP?  March on Whitehall waving our SGC's and chanting??  The anti's will use the argument about cost to the police, and Joe Public will be sold.

Knowing that something is likely to happen in the future, and actually being able to do something about it, are two entirely different things.

(BTW, I mentioned democracy, but we don't live in a democracy)  :crazy:

 
The proposers of this early day motion are labour and one green MP.  They are not the party of government at present.  I am sure that there are plenty of examples of things that don't pay their way and as I have already said the cost goes beyond pure licensing which is all we should be responsible for!

I can't believe you are all ready to rollover on this.

As always its the thin end of the wedge.

If we don't kick up about this what's to stop them deciding to make it a form of taxation next?  Quadruple it this time and how much next year and the year after?

Please also don't forget that as licence holders we are licensed to be able to pay more VAT than anyone else on guns and shells so that contributes to the cost of the state, the home office and the police.

As a matter of interest how much is the cost for an RFD licence?

 
The proposers of this early day motion are labour and one green MP.  They are not the party of government at present.  I am sure that there are plenty of examples of things that don't pay their way and as I have already said the cost goes beyond pure licensing which is all we should be responsible for!

I can't believe you are all ready to rollover on this.

As always its the thin end of the wedge.

If we don't kick up about this what's to stop them deciding to make it a form of taxation next?  Quadruple it this time and how much next year and the year after?

Please also don't forget that as licence holders we are licensed to be able to pay more VAT than anyone else on guns and shells so that contributes to the cost of the state, the home office and the police.

As a matter of interest how much is the cost for an RFD licence?
Like I stated in my previous post, Shooters have probably got away with paying far too little for the SGCFAC over many years and now it is likely to catch up on us. £10 per year for a licence of any kind is unbelievably cheap in this day and age.

Also, just because an increase has been proposed, it does not mean that an annual rise is in the offing. And as Teepee said, what are we actually going to do about it if they want to increase the fee?

 
Even if the bill is passed there's a fair bit of time will go by before they get the first increase into force and I very much doubt if it will go up by the full amount in one go anyway.

 

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