Hamish Birchall Bulletin
Wednesday 14th February 2007 - The Stage reports success of live music petition
See 'Live music petition reaches list of top issues' in today's online Stage newspaper (Wed 14 Feb 2007):
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/15938/live-music-licensing-petition-reaches-list-of
Caveats re DCMS claim that their recent survey shows more than 60% of venues now have a licence for live music:
* DCMS has confirmed that 35% of those applying for authorisation to have live music had conditions on their licence.
* Unless those conditions are implemented, i.e. the fitting of noise limiters, hosting the music remains illegal.
* DCMS has confirmed that they did not ask venues whether they had implemented those conditions.
DCMS has already acknowledged that 40% of smaller venues have lost any automatic entitlement to live music (i.e. lost the old two performer exemption). But the unasked question about licence conditions means that for a significant additional percentage there is uncertainty about the legality of actually hosting live music. This tends to contradict Feargal Sharkey's claim in the DCMS press release of 7 December 2006: 'We know that the majority of venues – large and small – can now put on live music and that's fantastic news'.
http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Press_notices/archive_2006/DCMS155_06.htm
Why didn't he say: 'This survey shows that the majority of smaller venues can either no longer automatically host any live music, or cannot host live music until they implement potentially costly conditions - and that's disappointing news'?
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