The Live Music Forum

Hamish Birchall Bulletin

 

Tuesday 13th February 2007 - Live music/licensing petition in top 10

 

Please circulate

Over 11,400 people have signed the live music/licensing petition on the Number 10 website. At the time of writing it stands at number 8 in the list of nearly 3,000 petitions and is likely to climb higher today:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/licensing/

The petition was backed by Libby Purves in The Times on 6 February: http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article1336496.ece

In the last few days the Number 10 petition website has attracted widespread media coverage due to the petition opposing the government's road pricing proposals . See today's online Guardian, for example:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2011954,00.html

Ministers, and some in the press, have cast doubt on the value of such petitions. But one thing is clear: a successful petition does raise public and media awareness about an issue, making it more difficult for politicians to ignore. In the next few weeks, the Live Music Forum will present its recommendations for improvement of the Licensing Act to ministers. 

Please consider signing the petition if you haven't already done so. If you have signed, encourage friends to sign.  Points to remember about the new law:

'Very few establishments that wanted a new licence were denied it, and many who were previously limited to 2-in-a-bar now have the ability to stage music with 2 or more musicians... This contrasts, of course, with the fact that 40% of establishments now have no automatic means of putting on live music (i.e. they would have to give a TEN).'

['Licensing Act 2003, The experience of smaller establishments in applying for live music authorisation', December 2006', paragraphs 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 'Conclusions', p54; Caroline Callahan, Andy Martin, Anna Pierce, Ipsos-MORI]

'TEN' stands for Temporary Event Notice - in effect a temporary entertainment licence. Only 12 are allowed per premises per year. They cost £21 each.  See the full MORI reports on this site: http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Research/research_by_dcms/live_music_exec_summary.htm

Hamish Birchall

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