Foxyboy43
Well-Known Member
Looking for some straight information on the above across the UK chaps so please read on…
The Police Service of Northern Ireland is the single body responsible for all firearms licensing currently in NI and applicants can only apply for an FAC and its various derivatives on-line. A lot of public money has been spent in the last decade to provide a purpose-built system to facilitate this. It has proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful to the extent that even straightforward regrants typically take many months and earlier this year firearms licensing problems were elevated to Command Gold status i.e. the Chief Constable was formally made aware of this. Whether related or not, our Licensing Branch closed down to the outside world for two weeks “while work was carried out on the system” - it is not known whether this has made any difference to outputs at this time though anecdotally it seems not. Meanwhile frustration builds in the shooting community and RFDs have the additional financial pressures of stock sitting for many months before they benefit from a sale. In this latter regard there is the added problem of RFDs having a limit on the total numbers of firearms they can hold - so the longer licensing takes the greater the number of guns held and the fewer the number of new guns they can hold to sell - not great for their business or indeed the shooting man!!
Enough of the background! I am intending to write to the Secretary of State about a number of unsatisfactory firearms licensing matters and would welcome some info on differing systems in use elsewhere in the UK. Key to this is the short-notice move to an IT-only system when seen against the backdrop that even now computer access is at 88% only of the NI population which raises the inevitable question about the fundamental ready accessibility of the system. Sooo grateful if you would simply advise whether your licensing authority also has an IT-based licensing system (most certainly appear to) and if so what if any are the alternatives in place for those without ready access to the Internet. Something as simple as:-
Licensing Force Name;
IT system - Yes/No; and
Other System i.e.- paper-based.
Much obliged.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland is the single body responsible for all firearms licensing currently in NI and applicants can only apply for an FAC and its various derivatives on-line. A lot of public money has been spent in the last decade to provide a purpose-built system to facilitate this. It has proven to be spectacularly unsuccessful to the extent that even straightforward regrants typically take many months and earlier this year firearms licensing problems were elevated to Command Gold status i.e. the Chief Constable was formally made aware of this. Whether related or not, our Licensing Branch closed down to the outside world for two weeks “while work was carried out on the system” - it is not known whether this has made any difference to outputs at this time though anecdotally it seems not. Meanwhile frustration builds in the shooting community and RFDs have the additional financial pressures of stock sitting for many months before they benefit from a sale. In this latter regard there is the added problem of RFDs having a limit on the total numbers of firearms they can hold - so the longer licensing takes the greater the number of guns held and the fewer the number of new guns they can hold to sell - not great for their business or indeed the shooting man!!
Enough of the background! I am intending to write to the Secretary of State about a number of unsatisfactory firearms licensing matters and would welcome some info on differing systems in use elsewhere in the UK. Key to this is the short-notice move to an IT-only system when seen against the backdrop that even now computer access is at 88% only of the NI population which raises the inevitable question about the fundamental ready accessibility of the system. Sooo grateful if you would simply advise whether your licensing authority also has an IT-based licensing system (most certainly appear to) and if so what if any are the alternatives in place for those without ready access to the Internet. Something as simple as:-
Licensing Force Name;
IT system - Yes/No; and
Other System i.e.- paper-based.
Much obliged.
