A NEW approach to Hongkong restaurant and bar licensing will be announced today, but the move has already been described as not going far enough. A senior member of the Urban Council Liquor Licensing Board welcomed the proposed streamlining of licence applications but said unfair delays would continue unless provisional liquor licences were granted. ''You are just cutting part of the red tape,'' elected Urban Councillor Daniel Wong Kwok-tung said yesterday. ''It does not go far enough and it's not fair enough unless you hand people the provisional licence.'' The Urban Services and Regional Services Departments are expected to announce today details of the ''one-stop shop'' approach, including the creation of a central panel to vet restaurant, fast food and liquor licences. The various departments involved in considering licence applications will also be required to speed up their investigations and deliberations. The announcement will follow a meeting this morning with independent Legislative Councillor Martin Barrow and restaurant industry representatives, who have long been lobbying for a more efficient system of handling licence applications. Mr Wong said that although licence applications would be speeded up under the new procedures, some restaurants might still be placed in the position of having been granted a restaurant licence but not a liquor licence. Under arrangements which remain unchanged, consideration of a liquor licence application only takes place after the primary question of a restaurant licence has been settled. Some restaurants have been forced to close because they cannot afford to wait for a liquor licence. Mr Wong said restaurant licensees should be granted a provisional liquor licence immediately, enabling them to trade while their applications for full licences were processed. ''In some cases we are cutting the throats of some innocent people,'' Mr Wong said. Mr Barrow agreed: ''We want provisional licences and a one-stop shop. This extraordinarily bureaucratic steeplechase has been going on in Hongkong for years now and it's time it came to an end.'' Mr Wong said the Urban Services and Regional Services Departments and the police were concerned that provisional licences would enable restaurants to sell liquor without the authorities knowing whether they were ''fit and proper'' to do so. ''We [should] just give them the benefit of the doubt,'' he said. But the Regional Services Department's assistant director (environmental hygiene), Kong Bok-yin, said provisional licences would give restaurateurs ''false hope'' of attaining a full licence and would be unfair for people living near the restaurants. ''It may not be fair to people living nearby, since on the one hand we are inviting objections to the [full] liquor licence but on the other hand we are granting a [provisional] licence right away,'' Mr Kong said.