LICENSING

Street trading ice cream vendor making regular rounds to sell ice cream from vans on designated consent streets vendor not roundsman and requiring councils consent...Street trading ice cream vendor making regular rounds to sell ice cream from vans on designated consent streets vendor not roundsman and requiring councils consent for street tradingKempin (trading as British Bulldog Ice Cream) v Brighton & Hove Council: QBD (Latham LJ and Potts J): 12 February 2001The defendant and his drivers made regular rounds on regular routes, selling ice cream from vans on streets which were designated as consent streets where street trading without the consent of the council had been prohibited.The defendant was convicted of trading on the designated streets without consent of the council, contrary to paragraph 10(1)(b) of sched 4 to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982.The defendant appealed against conviction, contending that he was a roundsman for the purposes of paragraph 1(2)(f) of sched 4, with the result that his practice of going around to his customers offering to sell them his ice cream and other items did not constitute street trading.

Matthew Bagnall (instructed by Rowe & Cohen) for the defendant.

Giles Colin (instructed by the solicitor, Brighton & Hove Council, Hove) for the council.Held, dismissing the appeal, that, in the absence of any definition in the Act of the meaning of the word roundsman, and having regard the purpose of sched 4 to regulate street trading, roundsman was to be construed within the context of an exception from the definition of street trading; that a round denoted going the route of customers for the delivery of goods and the word delivery meant distribution of ordered goods; and that, accordingly, the activity of the defendant did not fall within the exception in paragraph 1(2)(f).