Live Music Bill
Following a debate in the House of Commons on the 14 December
the Live Music Bill has been amended. This Bill is said to
"strike the right balance between increased flexibility and
ensuring councils have appropriate safeguards to keep communities
safe and protect residents from noise and anti-social
behaviour."
Essentially this Bill (if enacted without further amendment
which is always possible) will do the following:
- removes the need to licence the provision of entertainment
facilities for music, dancing or anything similar
- removes the need to licence live unamplified music between 8.00
am and 11.00 pm at any venue
- removes the need to licence live amplified music between 8.00
am and 11.00 pm at premises licensed to sell alcohol with an
audience of less than 200 persons
- removes the need to licence live amplified music between 8.00
am and 11.00 pm at a workplace with an audience of less than 200
persons
- maintains the provision that conditions on a premises licence
relating to live amplified/unamplified music between 8.00 am and
11.00 pm with an audience of less than 200 have no effect
- maintain the provision for conditions to be added to a premises
licence for either unamplified or amplified live music.
Thus any venue which is not licensed to sell alcohol or is not a
workplace will still have to apply for a premises licence or
Temporary Event Notice for live amplified music.
We have picked out one or two of the more interesting comments
in the debate:
"Some of the concerns that residents’ associations have
expressed are overblown. People who move next to a pub or a club
often seem shocked when people start attending that facility,
whether in motor cars or on foot. We need to get the balance right
in our society between the needs of our citizens for culture and
entertainment and the needs of people who want to draw their
curtains and cut themselves off from the world."
(And so say all of us)
"Indeed, at the end of 2009, the excellent then chairman of
UK Music, Mr Feargal Sharkey, claimed that there had been nine
consultations, two Government research projects, two national
review processes and a Select Committee report, and still there had
been no action."
(No surprise there, two years on and the law has still not
been changed despite apparent all party support in the Commons and
Lords and there appears to be no imminent date for implementation
of this Bill!)
"I want to support the Bill. I thought that the provision in
the 2003 Act was bad and heavy-handed. The exception for morris
dancing was typical of some of the discussions on the Act, so we
had the heavy-handed on one side and the silly on the other…….I
suppose I should repeat the old saw that one should try absolutely
everything other than incest and morris dancing."
(Apologies to all morris dancers!).
