Licence Renewal (Scotland, of course)

[bighit]

My renewal for all certificates is also due. Last time the GP just issued a form letter for medical consent, this time they had a form to fill out and it took considerably longer to process and cost twice as much. Its almost as if they are trying to make it more complicated and expensive to discourage people from renewing in Scotland.

My renewal for FAC and SGC 2017 ,The medical report was the same as it is now. Only think that changed this time was the cost. It was £35 in 2017.

[Griffon]

I've just received the new certificate through the post, one less thing to worry about.

[zephyr]

I do not work for the Government or in the legal industry and I'm not connected to the Police.

My own experience - I carefully completed and sent in my AWL1 for renewal in good time. "Verification" was signed by a fellow shooting club member. No need for Dr letter. New AWL received without further questions or delay.

I have noticed in recent months the Police are checking up on the 'Reason' for an AWL more than previously. Anomalies in the reasons given, do, understandably, cause delays.

[Archer50]

The police are now checking every applicant - first time, or renewal - who claims to be a member of my club, making sure their membership is current and asking how many times they have attended in the past year. Most applicants have been fine, but there have been a couple who are definitely not members and never have been, so I doubt if they'll be getting an AWC any time soon.

[pa_broon74]

Just dig this up a bit, it's not to old though - hope no one minds.

My AWL also came up for renewal. It wasn't just granted this time round.

On the one hand, if they're going to do it, they may-as-well do it properly and check up on answers to questions, on the other, it still don't think it deters airguns being in the wrong hands. (Although how often are airguns used in crime anyway? But that's not my point/question.)

I only shoot with Scouts, we offer it as an activity about once every two or three months.

I filled out the renewal, nothing to report there. But this time they wanted to check out where I shoot. (I can't remember what I said first time round.) We have a range set up in our scout hall, (it's our building, not hired or anything). The range is not permanent. We also have some land down in the Borders, but that's not fully on line yet. They came down to look at the set up - I checked to see what groups did elsewhere, and based out set up on that. There was a comment about it not being ideal - but it's a scout hall, not a full time shooting range, and with the best will in the world, we're not shooting live ammunition.

They advised that I apply for a club license, they said my AWL license didn't cover shooting as an activity for Scouts. They said, rather than apply for an event licence every time we did it, a club license would cover us.

We're not a shooting club though. We seem to fall through the cracks. Apparently, if we were for-profit, an individual's AWL would cover recreational shooting, but we're not for-profit so...

The club form isn't arduous to fill out it's much the same as the individual AWL form, but my question would be - has anyone else come across this? I know there are scout activity centres that offer shooting as an activity, are they running 'shooting clubs' too?

This is a bit niche, but I wondered if anyone else had come across this.


PS: I would say, the officers were keen for the activity to run, they absolutely weren't being oppositional about it. I think they were 'interpreting' the AWL legislation as best they could too - it's not well written, at least, not for our circumstances.