The Government, in its manifesto before the last election, outlined proposals to charge gun owners and businesses more for administering the licences they are required to hold in order to go about their chosen sport or conduct business in the Gun Trade.
The increases are significant, with rises of between 111% for Firearm Certificate renewal and 157% for renewal of a Shotgun Certificate.
Dealers will see renewal of the RFD Certificate go from £200 to £466, an increase of 133%. Visitors to the UK have paid £20 for Visitor Shotgun Permits to date but these will rise in cost to £47, an increase of 135%. All these costs are hugely in excess of inflation since fees were last set, which would have added just 35% to each licence, if that were the only consideration.
The Government seeks to improve the performance of the police in handling licence applications, which is necessary, with many police forces failing in their statutory duty to administer licences and some shooters waiting years, rather than months, to have a new application processed.
None of this helps encourage people to take up or retain their ability to participate in shooting sports and, although the Government currently claims to be supportive of 'responsible shooters', these fee increases are not encouraging.
The Labour manifesto also pledged to effectively tax shooters (through licence fees) to pay for anti-knife crime initiatives but the Government has, thankfully, not followed through on that. Quite what they thought shooting sports has to do with knife crime I still fail to understand.
Below is a table indicating the new fee structure about to come into force. Happy New Year!
Published by Vintage Guns Ltd on
