Allow live music to thrive

Listening to an interview with Feargal Sharkey of the Live Music Forum the other day, I was reminded just how many great musicians started their careers in pubs. Live music is an essential ingredient of local community activity, he said, and I totally agree. Unfortunately, live music seems to raise the hackles of local councils more than almost anything else.

What Sharkey wants is some acknowledgement of proportionality - that many small events do not need the raft of conditions and restrictions required by major gigs. He even wants exemption from licensing entirely for the kind of acts often found in small pubs.

Well, a kind of exemption was tacked on to the Licensing Act at the last moment, but few people understand it, due to its incredibly obscure drafting. It means that for certain limited and un-amplified music, certain conditions may not be attached to the licence.

But live music is now bundled with the alcohol permission. This means that all pubs will have the basic licence already, so the music lobby's claim that people have unnecessary licences is just not true. What they mean is that unnecessary conditions and restrictions inhibit licensees from putting on live music in some areas.

This much is provable. Unfortunately, the safety elements loom large, and the raft of conditions that some trigger-happy councils seek to impose means that even the smallest pub may be deterred from extending its licence by seeking a variation.

Then there is the expense - not just of the application itself, which will cost a minimum of £500-600 - but also of installation requirements, which could set a pub back thousands. No wonder many of those who could support live music think the extra trade will not pay for the required expenses, and duck out.

But I hope that now the dust has settled on licensing reform and new ministers are in place, they can see some merit in taking off the jobsworth shackles.

Thanks to the Blair legacy, there are plenty of new statutory restrictions on noise and nuisance that the authorities can call into play if they need to, so let's make the licensing side a bit easier for those who want to encourage musical talent.