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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

It will be necessary for the local authority to ask the necessary questions to ensure that its database is appropriate and satisfactory. I started by saying that this is not an easy issue. The noble Lord, Lord Cope, is quite right to raise it at this stage, but it is not beyond the wit of local authorities to sort it out. Some franchises are effectively single businesses running in one place. Others, and their policies, are clearly controlled from elsewhere. It may not always be easy to work out which is which, but that will have to happen if this concept of the primary authority is to succeed in a particular locality.