I should have said 'where carol singing is concerned'. I don't think there is the same agreement on sessions.

LAs will feel they can obstruct and prevent social music making like sessions etc, under this Act simply because they always have. Mainly by bullying individual licensees and by ignoring the relatively few active participants - safe in the knowledge that it is highly unlikely that they will have to prove their case in court.   

I think that we can see thay individual LAs are now a lot less sure what to do when it comes to arranged social carol singing outside a supermarket, for example. Simply because historically licensing officers they have not bothered with this before. I suspect that they would rather not have to be bothered with it now

It is a whole new ball game when obstructing or directly preventing church leaders and congregations. It involves a lot more people who understand the activity and brings quite different publicity. And with this comes a very real possibilty that they may at some point have to be prepared to prove their case in court.

My fear is that the whole thing will die down - until next year and hat session will be no better off. Perhaps we should ensure that it is not allowed to and work out over the holiday the best way of doing this?