A decade ago a licensing consultation convinced half of London that the party was being shut down, and the council’s denial is still worth reading
Hackney’s Midnight Closing Row: What Really Happened and Why It Still Matters
Every neighbourhood has a founding myth. Shoreditch has several, but among the people who run its bars one story is told more than any other: the time the council tried to make everyone close at midnight.
It did not, quite. But the episode is worth revisiting, because the same arguments are being had again.
The Panic
Around 2015, Hackney Council consulted on changes to its licensing policy. The proposals included what was described as a borough-wide opening hours policy and an extension to the Shoreditch Special Policy Area. Word spread that the council wanted all venues shut by midnight. There was a campaign. There were petitions. Promoters, DJs and bar owners lined up to say that the borough was killing the thing that had made it famous.
The council felt obliged to respond. It published a statement with a title that has become a small classic of municipal defensiveness: “Hackney will not be closing at midnight.”
What the Council Said
In it, the chair of the Licensing Committee set out the reasoning. Hackney, the statement said, is seen as one of the best places in London for a night out, and the council did not want that to change. The changes, it insisted, were not a route to a blanket midnight closing time, then or later.
Then the numbers. Between 2011 and 2014, 342 new licences had been granted, taking the total number of alcohol, late night and entertainment licences in the borough to almost 1,300. The vast majority were in Dalston and Shoreditch. Nightlife was booming and the areas where people spent their nights had expanded.
The statement also made a point about history. The Shoreditch Special Policy Area had been in place since 2005, and anyone familiar with the area would know there had not been a crackdown on new bars and clubs. Quite the opposite.
What Was Actually Proposed
A separate council notice inviting comments gives the detail. It proposed extending the boundary of the Shoreditch Special Policy Area south to the borough boundaries with the City, Islington and Tower Hamlets, and west to the Old Street roundabout along the southern part of City Road. The stated aim was to ensure that hospitality venues thrive and grow, in areas that would not adversely affect residents.
The hours policy set out “core hours” that new applicants would generally be expected to keep to unless they could justify longer. That is where the midnight figure came from. It was a default starting point for new licences in certain areas, not a curfew on existing ones.
Who Was Right?
Both sides, a little.
The council was right that it was not proposing to close existing venues at midnight. The campaign overstated the threat.
The campaigners were right that a default of midnight for new licences, with the burden on the applicant to argue for later, would make it harder to open a late venue, and that over time, as old venues closed and new ones were held to earlier hours, the character of the area would shift.
The council listened to some degree. The consultation was paused and re-run. The policy that eventually emerged, and its successors, have been argued over ever since.
What Has Happened Since
Here is the irony. The fear in 2015 was that regulation would kill Shoreditch nightlife. A decade later, venues are closing in what a council board has called record numbers. But the cause is mostly not licensing. It is rent, costs and changing habits.
The Special Policy Areas themselves lapsed in 2018 when the law changed. The council has since consulted on a replacement.
The licence count the council cited in 2015, nearly 1,300, came from a period of rapid growth. I do not have the current figure, but few people on the High Street would tell you the number of late venues has continued to climb.
Lessons
I take three things from the story.
First, nightlife has a constituency. The reaction in 2015 showed that a lot of people care about it and will organise. Councils that treat it only as a nuisance to be controlled will be told otherwise.
Second, residents have one too, and they are quieter. The people kept awake do not run social media campaigns. They write to their councillor. A fair policy has to hear both.
Third, the things that really threaten venues are often not the things people protest about. A licensing consultation is visible and has a villain. A rent review is private and has none.
The Phrase
I am fond of the headline. “Hackney will not be closing at midnight.” It has the ring of a government insisting there is no cause for alarm. It is also, as it turned out, true. Hackney did not close at midnight.
What nobody anticipated was that parts of it might close altogether.
Why I Am Raising It Now
Because the council is once again considering how to regulate new licences in Shoreditch, and the debate is in danger of repeating itself: operators warning of the end of nightlife, the council insisting it loves a party, residents wondering when anyone will ask them.
It would be good, this time, to have the argument about what is actually happening. The night is not being regulated out of existence. It is being priced out. Those are different problems with different remedies.
To Lighten Things
Closing time has a long comic history. The London Prat adds to it in its British satirical news on closing time and London satirical news about Hackney council. You can read more of my after-dark reporting there. Bohiney Magazine covers last call in America.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
