City Hall’s nightlife taskforce wants one licensing rulebook for all of London and an end to the zones that restrict new venues, which would change Shoreditch more than anywhere
The Nightlife Taskforce Report
I have read a great many reports about nightlife. They tend to open with a photograph of a dance floor, declare that the night-time economy is worth billions, and close with a recommendation that somebody set up a working group.
The one published in January is different, and I have been meaning to write about it properly since. If its proposals were adopted, the rules governing every bar and club in Shoreditch would be rewritten.
What It Is
The London Nightlife Taskforce was formed last year by the Mayor. A dance music magazine described it as the Greater London Authority’s first dedicated nightlife group, which has prepared 23 proposals and recommendations in its first publication, under the title Protecting, retaining and growing London’s nightlife.
Its members came from the trade: venue operators, promoters, the industry bodies. That matters. This was not officials writing about an industry. It was the industry being asked what was wrong.
The magazine’s summary says the proposals include reforms to licensing and planning to make applications more consistent, streamlined and accessible across all boroughs. Among the priorities raised by those surveyed were support for grassroots and independent spaces, inclusive nightlife, safety and regulatory reform.
The Finding That Matters Most
The executive summary contains a number I keep returning to. More than half of the nightlife spaces that responded to the survey, 53 per cent, described London’s licensing systems as outdated, arbitrary and stifling.
Anyone who has tried to open or run a venue here will nod. Licensing in London is done by thirty-three separate authorities. Each has its own policy, its own committee, its own habits. A promoter with an event that would be waved through in one borough may be refused across the road in another. Conditions attached to a licence in Hackney may be quite different from those on an identical venue in Tower Hamlets, three minutes’ walk away.
Shoreditch, as it happens, straddles that boundary. I know of operators who chose which side of a street to open on according to which town hall they would be dealing with.
The Proposals
The summary sets out what the taskforce wants. A London-level licensing policy and service. A London Licensing Operating Standard to deliver consistency across boroughs. Priority given to areas the London Plan classifies as suitable for nightlife. And the removal of Cumulative Impact Assessments.
That last phrase needs explaining, because it is the one that would land hardest here.
Cumulative Impact
Under the present law, a council can declare that a particular area has so many licensed premises that adding more would cause problems. Once it has done so, the presumption changes. Normally a licence is granted unless there is good reason to refuse. In a cumulative impact area, a new licence is refused unless the applicant can show it will not add to the trouble.
Shoreditch has been such an area for years. I wrote in the summer about the long argument over it. The effect is that opening a new late bar or club in the triangle between Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and Great Eastern Street is, in practice, very difficult.
Residents fought for that. They would say, with justice, that there was a period when the neighbourhood was close to unliveable at weekends, and that the policy is the reason it is not now.
Operators see it differently. They would say the policy does not distinguish between a responsible small venue and a vertical drinking barn. It protects whoever already has a licence from competition. And it freezes the area. Nothing new can start.
The taskforce has come down on the operators’ side.
What It Would Mean Here
If cumulative impact assessments went, an application on Curtain Road would be judged on its own merits. Is this operator competent? Is this building suitable? What hours, what capacity, what conditions?
That would open the door to new venues. Some of them would be good. Shoreditch has lost a great many, as I have recorded, and has gained few.
It would also remove the residents’ strongest protection. Without the presumption against, each application becomes a fresh fight, and residents do not have the time or the lawyers that an operator has.
The council’s new area plan, published in March, takes a middle course of its own: new night-time venues only in designated streets. That is a planning policy and not a licensing one, but it points the same way as the residents would want. So City Hall and the town hall are not obviously aligned.
Who Would Decide?
The more radical part is the idea of a London-level policy. At present licensing belongs to the boroughs. The taskforce envisages a framework set by the Mayor.
The magazine’s report quotes the Mayor as saying that City Hall expects to receive new licensing powers from the government soon.
That is a real shift of power. The argument for it is consistency and a strategic view of the whole city. The argument against is that licensing is the most local of decisions. The people who know whether a street can bear another late bar are the people who live on it and the councillors they elect. A policy written at City Hall for nine million people may not see Rivington Street at all.
Where I Come Down
I run a blog about going out. You would expect me to cheer.
I do think the present system is arbitrary. I have watched good venues strangled by conditions that served no purpose, and I have seen the same application get opposite answers a hundred yards apart. Consistency would be a gain.
But I have also lived above a bar. A blanket presumption against is a blunt tool. Taking it away without putting something more precise in its place would be to tell residents that their sleep is now a matter of case-by-case negotiation.
What I would want is a policy that looks at the kind of venue. A two-hundred-capacity room with a serious music programme and a door policy is not the same as a chain bar with a two-for-one offer. The first is the thing we keep losing. The second is the thing that made the cumulative impact policy necessary.
If a London standard could tell those apart, it would be worth having. If it simply made everything easier to open, we would be back where we were in 2010, and the residents would be right to be furious.
What Happens Next
The report is a set of recommendations. Some need legislation. Some need boroughs to agree, and several will not. A draft London licensing policy has been out for consultation.
I shall follow it. If you have a view, and you live or work here, the time to say so is before the policy is written, not after the first application lands on your street.
The London Prat has been ejected from better establishments than this and surveys the rules in its British satirical news on licensing reform and its London satirical news about twenty-three recommendations. Bohiney Magazine covers a country where the bars close when the owner feels like it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
