Mark Daniels: TENs - It's time to cut the red tape
The call that came through last Thursday had the potential to be quite exciting. Frankie Martin, of the Great British Pub Tour, is raising money for Help for Heroes by performing every day for 366 days in 366 different venues, with the whole thing finishing on Frankie's 50th birthday, Tuesday 19th April 2011.
(Incidentally, that's two days after my 39th...)
But, last Thursday, the show Frankie was due to perform had to be cancelled and, hearing of his plight, Greene King rang me up and asked if I'd be able to have the singer perform in my pub. He just needed the opportunity to play so that he didn't break his run of shows.
Needless to say, I was happy to oblige - but then the spectre of red tape hung over me. My premises isn't licensed for Entertainment; we're quite small, and the odd event I do hold during the year I just cover with a Temporary Event Notice.
Frantic phone calls were made to see if we could do something to help. After all, it's for charity - according to Frankie's website, at the time of writing he has managed to raise a whopping £111'296 - and the show would probably be for no more than thirty to sixty minutes tops, just to help out.
Unfortunately, though, in order to get a TEN agreed legislation says you need to give ten clear working days notice, and that these cannot include the date of the event itself, nor the date that you hand your application in. I've fallen foul of this ten day deadline in the past by just one day and had to decline the opportunity to do a short notice event.
Ultimately, the advice from the Licensing departments was that I couldn't hold the show. It was tempting to just say play anyway, but I wouldn't have wanted to have such a worthwhile cause sullied by legal wrangling had it all gone horribly wrong, and fortunately Frankie Martin was able to find another venue to play to keep his string of shows running.
But here's the thing: Temporary Event Notices, if common sense was applied, can be turned around really quickly and while I agree that there should be a level of caution taken if events are of a certain size or nature or if the application is submitted by somebody who is known to have had issues in the past, for those of us who might get the odd opportunity to turn something around quickly the bureaucracy surrounding TEN applications is frustratingly absurd.
And yet there is evidence that Temporary Event Notices can be dealt with quite quickly. Last Wednesday, using my local council's online service, I put in applications for TENs for two forthcoming events I'm providing bar services for later in April. I completed and paid for the first one at 10:39, and the second one at 10:46; the online application process is so quick that when it was launched last year it took such a lot of the administrative hassle of license applications away it's now almost a pleasure to apply. (I said "almost"...)
At 15:21 and 15:35 the same day, I received acknowledgement and authorisation for each of the TENs I had applied for.
So it really is time to cut the red tape surrounding this legislation; if such administration can be completed in less than five hours on the same day that the application is made, there surely should be the ability to apply common sense to applications and a moratorium to the usual ten day waiting process for certain events.
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If you want to find out more about Frankie Martin's tour, see where he's playing next or find out how to make a donation to his cause, please visit: www.bndmusic.co.uk/
