Concerns over Licensing Act as 80% of venues reject live music

Published Thursday 21 October 2004 at 10:20 by Jeremy Austin

More than 80% of venue owners capable of hosting live music have told a government survey that they would not be doing so, prompting concern over the effect of the Licensing Act when it finally comes into force in November 2005.

During a House of Lords debate on the findings of the poll by Market and Opinion Research International - released at the beginning of last month - Conservative peer Baroness Buscombe said fellow peers “had every right to be despondent” following the publication of the document.

“Based on what respondees have heard about the Licensing Act so far, only 1% of those polled said they would certainly consider putting on live music in their venue, 3% said they were very likely to do so, 12% said they were fairly likely to do so and the rest - 84% of the respondees to this poll - said that they would not consider putting on live music,” she told the House.

As well as introducing the government’s controversial policy to allow pubs to be open 24 hours, the Licensing Act does away with the unpopular ‘two in a bar’ rule that theoretically allowed two or fewer performers to work in premises without a Public Entertainment Licence. This, however, was open to interpretation by local authorities with licences available at wildly varying costs depending on in which part of the country they were applied for.

The government is confident that the new legislation, which will grant free entertainment licences to venues also applying for an alcohol permit, will encourage greater provision of live music.

However, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Redesdale had opened the debate with a question on how the government had come to the conclusion that live music was “flourishing” in restaurants, hotels and pubs.

“It was rather distressing to note - way down the list of statistics, although it seemed the most important fact - that those who knew most about the Licensing Act were the least likely to put on live music in the future and the most deterred from doing so. This seems a significant problem, considering how few pubs and clubs put on live music at present. If fewer of them put on live music in the future, that will mean even fewer venues in which aspiring musicians can perform.”

As reported in The Stage last month, licensees from 1,600 pubs, clubs, student unions and restaurants took part in the study compiled for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by the independent market research company.

Responding for the government, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting said it remained “absolutely confident” that the act and reforms will allow live music to flourish. He said that 47% of surveyed venues said that they had staged live music but almost a third - 29% per cent - said they were not able to do so because their venue did not have the capacity.

He added: “If one takes out those venues, about 55% of the remainder staged live music, which represents not a minority of venues but a majority.”

However, campaigner Hamish Birchall said that the peer had misused the data. Said Birchall: “In fact, on the basis of the DCMS published data, it is not possible to know what proportion of the 29% don’t have live music because of capacity or space restrictions and what proportion are in fact citing entertainment licensing restrictions. Indeed, Lord Evans also misleadingly implied that the 29% related to the total sample. In fact, it applies to the sample of venues that did not stage live music.”