Firearms licensing fees.

[dromia]

Looks like our "representative" bodies have let us down again and are recommending acceptance of these proposals.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... the-police

Seems it is a tactical excuse to get this in place now rather than face a more difficult set of "negotiations" if labour were to win some power at the election.

Personally I am very disappointed that our organisations haven't tackled the fundamental principles of why we have to pay for licensing in the first place as it is a public safety issue from which FAC holder get no specific benefit.

Also poor progress has been made on designing and effective licensing system based on the individual rather than the firearm.

At the end of the day I suspect that this is a reflection of the lack of clout and leverage our fractured representative organisations have.

Although the increases aren't punitive the failure of the negotiations to address the fundamentals of the failed licensing system and its inconsistent application and general poor service across the country does not bode well for us.

[DL.]

The thing I notice about that set of fees is that it really increases the cost for someone beginning shooting, and as we all know, all that needs to be done to curtail people shooting is make it hard to take up - the results within 10 - 15 years would be irretrievable.

I have to say again how horrified I am at the organisations who have given up without a fight against this change in licensing.

[Blackstuff]

The 'agreed' figures are full cost recovery (FCR) AND with an annual review, so once its agreed tha firearms licensing is a FCR exercise all the police need to do is 'cook the books' to keep jacking up the price, year on year, brilliant(!) More cuts are coming to the public sector no matter which party gets elected next year so everyone should be expecting their certificate price to rise to help cover the cuts

The fact our organisations didn't even get a token amount taken from the cost so it wasn't FCR is disappointing to say the least.

[Demonic69]

What are the agreed figures, the linked doc is just the consultation

[Gaz]

The 'agreed' figures are full cost recovery (FCR) AND with an annual review, so once its agreed tha firearms licensing is a FCR exercise all the police need to do is 'cook the books' to keep jacking up the price, year on year, brilliant(!)

Indeed - and how much do you think the random spot check campaign costs? It's no surprise they were pushing so hard for an annual review of fees and the power to rewrite the Home Office Guidance every 3 months.

[dromia]

Figures agreed are those in the document.

[Demonic69]

The consultation hasn't finished yet, so are these just what our national bodies have accepted?
I wonder how the government would feel if we could organise a national strike of all firearms owners

[dromia]

The consultation hasn't finished yet, so are these just what our national bodies have accepted?

Yes, that is what I said in the OP.

[Demonic69]

Cool, I don't get any mails from them so I didn't know they'd thrown their hats in the ring. It's sad that they are just going for a best-case scenario and not actually fighting for us

[nickb834]

Looks like our "representative" bodies have let us down again and are recommending acceptance of these proposals.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... the-police

Seems it is a tactical excuse to get this in place now rather than face a more difficult set of "negotiations" if labour were to win some power at the election.

Personally I am very disappointed that our organisations haven't tackled the fundamental principles of why we have to pay for licensing in the first place as it is a public safety issue from which FAC holder get no specific benefit.

Also poor progress has been made on designing and effective licensing system based on the individual rather than the firearm.

At the end of the day I suspect that this is a reflection of the lack of clout and leverage our fractured representative organisations have.

Although the increases aren't punitive the failure of the negotiations to address the fundamentals of the failed licensing system and its inconsistent application and general poor service across the country does not bode well for us.

Well said, I couldn't agree more with all those points. I know not what the solution is for us - but a decent start would have to be consolidation of the various shooting bodies into a single entity.

I hate tin foil hat wearing theories but, I'm struggling to convince myself that somewhere there aren't minutes of a meeting that specifically deals with reducing the number of firearms within the civillian population.