Researchers counted premises, tracked footfall and singled out two stretches of pavement, and their findings explain why residents and revellers will never quite agree
Shoreditch at Night: What the Council’s Behaviour Study Found
Arguments about nightlife usually run on anecdote. The bar owner says the area is safe and well run. The resident says she has not slept on a Friday since 2012. Each is telling the truth as they see it.
So I have a soft spot for the people who actually went out and counted. Some years ago Hackney Council commissioned a study of behaviour in the evening and night-time economy to inform its licensing policy. It is a long document. It is also the nearest thing there is to an objective picture.
What They Did
The study, published among the supporting documents for the council’s licensing consultation, describes its method as including street-by-street audits and descriptions of licensed premises. It identified the areas of the borough that stood out in licensing, crime and emergency health statistics. Shoreditch was first on the list.
Researchers mapped the district and a buffer zone around it. They categorised premises by type and closing time. They noted where the Shoreditch night-time area spills over borough boundaries, counting premises with closing times of one in the morning or later on the Tower Hamlets and Islington sides.
The Counts
Some of the numbers are striking even in summary. In the buffer zone alone, the study recorded 29 licensed premises with closing times of 1am or later, among them an adult entertainment venue, five nightclubs and eleven late-night bars, along with late-night restaurants.
It drew a distinction that I find useful. Premises that serve beers and cocktails into the late-night period with no, or minimal, food provision after eleven were classed as late-night bars, whatever they called themselves.
Two Stretches of Pavement
The detail that caught my eye concerns where people actually are. The study picked out locations with the highest volume of pedestrian traffic. Two are named: the junction of Shoreditch High Street and Great Eastern Street, and the north pavement of Old Street at the fire station.
Anyone who has been out here will nod. That junction is where the triangle funnels. On a busy night the pavement cannot hold the people on it and they spread into the road.
Why Footfall Matters
Licensing law is concerned with cumulative impact. A single bar closing at two is manageable. Twenty within a few hundred yards, all emptying around the same time onto the same narrow pavements, is a different thing. People queue for cabs and food. Arguments start. Noise carries.
The study gave the council evidence that the effect was real and concentrated. That is what the law requires before a special policy can be adopted.
The Scale of Growth
Around the same time, the council published figures on how fast things had expanded. A statement from the chair of its licensing committee said that 342 new licences had been granted between 2011 and 2014, taking the total to almost 1,300, the vast majority in Dalston and Shoreditch. Nightlife, it said, was booming and the areas where people spent their nights had expanded.
That was the context. A district that had grown very quickly, with the infrastructure of a Victorian street grid.
The Residents’ Experience
What numbers cannot convey is what it is like to live in the middle of it. Shoreditch is not only bars. Above and behind the venues are flats, including a good deal of social housing and some of the oldest council estates in the country. Families live there. Elderly people live there.
For them the issue is not whether the night-time economy is valuable. It is whether they can sleep, whether their doorstep is clean in the morning, whether their children can walk to school on Saturday without stepping round the remains of Friday.
The Revellers’ Experience
From the other side, the people on that pavement at one in the morning are mostly having a good time and causing no harm. They are spending money that pays wages. Many have travelled across the city because this is where the music or the friends are.
They would be surprised to learn they are a problem. And individually, they are not. The problem is the sum.
What Has Changed
The study dates from the boom. I would be cautious about assuming its counts still hold. More recent council papers refer to record numbers of venue closures in Shoreditch. The pressure on that junction may be less than it was.
It would be valuable to have the exercise repeated. An up-to-date audit would tell us whether the district still has the density that justified special measures, or whether policy is fighting the last war. I understand the council has commissioned a fresh cumulative impact assessment as part of its latest review.
Design, Not Only Licensing
One lesson I draw is that some of this is about streets, not licences. If the busiest point is a junction where pavements are too narrow, widen the pavements. If people linger because there is no transport, improve the night buses and the taxi ranks. If noise carries, think about where queues form.
Licensing is the tool councils reach for because it is the one they control. It is not always the right one.
Why Evidence Helps
The value of a study like this is that it moves the conversation from “nightlife is good” versus “nightlife is bad” to something more precise. Which venues? Which hours? Which corners? Those are questions that can have answers.
I would like to see more of it, and I would like it published in a form that residents and operators can both read. Shared facts will not end the argument. They would improve it.
For a Change of Mood
The view from the bedroom window on a Friday night has inspired a certain amount of rueful comedy. The London Prat offers some in its UK satirical news on noisy neighbours and British satirical news about Friday nights. My running account of Shoreditch nights is there too. Bohiney Magazine covers the American weekend.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
