How will the Summer Streets Fund impact pubs

The initiative provided £300,000 of pilot funding to four London Councils to introduce car free pedestrianised zones, and allow venues within these areas to apply for temporary pavement licences to provide outdoor seating to customers.

Now, on the face of it, this announcement sounds great.

The hospitality industry is continually hit with bad news, and it is refreshing to see the mayor’s office understand the sector’s concerns and propose this new initiative. However, when you dig a little deeper, the benefits are not all they seem.

Before I delve into the mechanics of the new Summer Streets scheme (Sorry Sadiq, you are not off the hook just yet), I want to take us back to 2020.

I am sure you do not need reminding of the events of Spring 2020 and the years that followed, a time period that was catastrophic for the licensed trade.

However, out of this period the industry developed and through legislation, a newfound love for outdoor dining was formed.

To combat the spread of COVID, and to support the trade, the Government at the time introduced the Business and Planning Act 2020. This piece of legislation brought in a number of emergency provisions, including two aimed to help hospitality venues:

An easement to allow licensed premises without the permission to sell alcohol off the premises;
An easier streamlined process for venues to apply for pavement licences to place tables and chairs on the highway

Following the enactment, hospitality businesses up and down the country scrambled together as many tables and chairs as they could and moved their venues onto the street. More than 3,300 applications were made across England up to June 2021.

Jovial punters

Table service, the limit of six, substantial meal, the infamous scotch egg debate – you name it, operators did everything the Government asked of them to keep the tills rolling and their business afloat.

As a self-proclaimed hospitality obsessive, the increase in al fresco dining was a roaring success for operators and customers alike.

Central London was awash with jovial punters, with many streets, such as Frith Street in Soho, closed to cars with wall-to-wall tables and chairs. Venues, jobs and livelihoods were all saved by this temporary permission, and may just be the reason your local is still open to this day.

Unfortunately, this same opinion was not shared by some local residents. With an increase in outdoor dining, came an increase in noise complaints.

Since COVID, noise complaints from local residents have become more and more prevalent for operators, with a significant focus on outside areas.

This, in turn, has applied pressure on councils to enforce against operators regarding the use of the pavement, resulting in the reduction or refusal of previously approved schemes to appease a small minority.

Lets remind ourselves - the Business and Planning Act was brought in to help businesses.

Now that COVID is over, this Act has expired, and a new fast-track pavement licensing regime has been introduced under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023.

The new act formalised the temporary measures introduced during the pandemic, and on paper this move is one welcomed by the trade, but in reality, the application by local authorities is sometimes far from supportive.

As a licensing lawyer, I have countless stories of venues across the capital that has had operation continually hampered by unreasonable restrictions relating to outside drinking for reasons lacking any evidential basis.

In my opinion, the biggest loser in all of this is what makes London so special – pubs. London has some of the best pubs in the world, and a cornerstone of that in warmer weather, particularly, is outside drinking.

City like no other

Walk down any street in Soho or around the city on a Thursday afternoon and you will see throngs of revellers sneaking in a Guinness or two before their train home to the suburbs. Office workers rubbing shoulders with tourists and shoppers, a pillar of what makes London a city like no other.

Yet, I fear local authorities do not share the same view. Increased residential involvement in licensing decisions, both premises licences and pavement licences, has led to more restriction placed on operators.

A recent example can be seen on a premises licence application for a great new venue in central London in a premises that had been a pub but had been closed for many years. The application was granted, however with the imposition of a capacity of 10 customers outside, a restriction that lacked any evidential basis and was not supported by the environmental health officer, the committees lead advisor on noise.

Now, I wholly understand why committees and authorities place some restrictions on operators – London is a nuanced place with residents and operators having to live happily as neighbours – however sometimes there is little thought given to the financial impact on the operator.

An operator can easily spend north of £1m to build new premises, and this one was no different. The premises had been a pub since the 1800’s and outside drinking is a key tenet of its operation.

To impose unnecessary and unreasonable restrictions creates flash points where they are not needed. A birthday drinks occasion with 11 friends is not going to be much fun for the one person who has to sit inside while the rest bask in the sunshine outside front.

A happy and friendly customer can quickly turn nasty if they are told they are not allowed outside when it is visible there is plenty of space. A further bone of contention for pub operators is pavement licence ‘standard conditions’.

With the enactment of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act, authorities are now able to apply conditions to pavement licences.

Conditions are not a new concept for publicans, many premises licences across the country have a number of conditions, though these are applied on a case-by-case basis, based on evidence.

Pavement licence ‘standard conditions’ are a raft of conditions, drafted individually by the local authority, and applied to every new pavement licence granted in their borough.

As a concept, this does not seem a problem. Many of the conditions are genuine safeguards to ensure operators run a tidy and clean operation, however when you delve a little deeper, some restrictions are frankly ridiculous.

One central London council has a standard condition that all alcohol consumed in a pavement area is by customers seated and served only by waiter/waitress service. How does this work for a pub?

Before COVID, pubs could operate freely with punters donning the pavement and enjoying a nice cold refreshment. Now, authorities are requesting pavement licences to manage the customers and subsequently forcing operators to agree to a standard condition that lacks any reasonableness or commercial forethought.

Dangerous swing

This puts operators in a real catch 22 – operate to the licence and lose significant trade, breach the licence and risk enforcement, or stop outside drinking and kill the business entirely – a rock, a hard place or liquidation.

Back to 2025, and we now have the mayor’s new Summer Streets proposal. Great idea – right? Well, the devil is in the detail.

Firstly, the scheme is only open to four boroughs, Hackney, Brixton, Leyton and Westminster, on certain designated streets.

One of those Streets, Redchurch Street in Hackney, shares custody with Tower Hamlets. Only three licensed venues fall within the Hackney side, and over 10 in Tower Hamlets. Yet, no money has been given to Tower Hamlets, so they are not running the scheme. Entirely illogical.

Further, the proposal is only running on Friday and Saturday from 6pm – midnight. Why not Sundays? Or Thursdays – which we all know is the new Friday.

Where are operators expected to store their additional tables and chairs the other five days of the week? It does not need a lawyer to point out the margins involved in hospitality businesses and I am pretty sure any spare storage space in venues will already be used to sweat the asset.

Without sounding too negative, I do believe the mayor has good intention. The proposal is a hopeful and positive move to bring back the vibrancy of outside dining to London, but at the moment, the scheme has a long way to go to support the trade.

London is an incredible city and hospitality at the epicentre of it. This musing is not intended to bash local authorities or central Government, both work tirelessly to balance the needs of licensed venues and residents.

However, in my opinion, we are seeing a dangerous swing away from trusting operators and a move towards excessive control and regulation, and with this, comes the risk that more and more of our favourite venues will soon be no more.