Police and the council have objected to a grocery delivery company’s application for a licence to deliver alcohol in Reading, raising concern about underage sales.

A licensing hearing has been called to consider whether to approve Tech start-up Gorillas’ application after the company and local authorities failed to agree on conditions for the licence.

Reading Borough Council (RBC) and Thames Valley Police (TVP) has asked for safeguards to be put in place to prevent underage people gaining access to alcohol but Gorillas’ lawyer called these conditions “completely over the top”.

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Gorillas, which operates across the country and Europe and claims to deliver in just 10 minutes, is seeking a licence to deliver on-line only groceries from 8a Richfield Avenue.

While the application from Gorillas includes conditions to ensure alcohol is not sold to under-18s, the police and council do not consider these to be sufficient and no agreement has been reached on alternative conditions.

RBC’s Trading Standards team said the application does not provide enough information on how the licensing objective of protecting children from harm will be promoted.

They said there is no information on staff training or its frequency, any processes for recordings incidents and refusals and how that would be monitored.

And the RBC team said there are also no details in the application on how the ordering process works and no mention of any safeguards in place to prevent underage young people gaining access to alcohol “other than reliance on a delivery rider being able to make a judgement based on no training”.

The police said Gorillas have not sufficiently taken into account concerns relating to protecting children from harm, public nuisance, crime and disorder within the local area and have objected to application in its current form.

And RBC’s Licensing team has called for a series of alternative conditions but the Gorillas’ legal team said two of these conditions would make it a criminal offence to deliver alcohol to someone under 18 at their home.

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Craig Baylis, legal counsel for Gorillas, said this is not a criminal offence and so would unenforceable.

He added: “I’ve done over 20 new licences for this company so far and no local authority has come anywhere near seeking the number of conditions that you are looking for.

“Conditions have to be proportionate to the application and some of these are frankly completely over the top for a relatively small operation delivering groceries where alcohol sales make up less than 20 per cent of their business.

“I suspect that Tesco and Sainsbury don’t have these conditions for their delivery vehicles.”

The application will be decided on by the council’s Licensing Applications Sub-Committee on Thursday July 15.