The Live Music Forum
Hamish Birchall Bulletin
Monday 20th February 2006 - Licensing - live music: Feargal Sharkey unable to find problems
In today's online Publican, a magazine for the licensed trade, Feargal Sharkey says that in evaluating the impact of the Licensing Act on gigs, the Live Music Forum '... has been trying to find the problems that have been talked about, but so far haven't found them.'
The DCMS is also quoted suggesting that 'there's no grounds for concern'.
This is odd considering that I have sent the LMF several well-documented instances of gigs unambiguously lost due to the new law.
Feargal also claims that in over 7,000 licence applications examined by the LMF no examples of licence conditions imposed were found. This claim was immediately dismissed by licensing lawyers. Applications as submitted to the local authority would not show licence conditions. These are only imposed once the application has been processed by the local authority.
The Publican is inviting feedback. Either email the article's author James Wilmore : jamesw@thepublican.com with details or call 020 7955 3713.
Read the full article: http://www.thepublican.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=19837&d=11&h=24&f=23&dateformat=%25o-%25B-%25Y
Hamish Birchall
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