This seasional reply from the second-in command of my local council may explain why regular congregations of musicians are thought so problematic that any review must wait until 2007 and on the following conditions........

I write following our recent meting. Apologies for not writing earlier – I needed some time to gather views of colleagues to respond to your specific points. Please also consider this as a response to your letter dated 19th November to Councillor Ames.

You raised 4 points. I have reproduced these along with our response to each below:

Firstly Perhaps our Licensing Authority can be advised to formally hold and issue a policy that pub sessions are considered locally as incidental live music – if or until there is any test in the nations' court that may decide to the contrary and require a change?

As you know, we have a Statement of Licensing Policy and I understand that you have had input into this. We will review this policy every three years and will consult on this as a matter of course. If we discover there is a problem in the Borough regarding sessions and incidental music, we seek to provide clarification when we revise the policy (in December 2007).

As I said when we met, if we do this, we will need to provide a definition of a session. Whilst we will need to prepare specific wording, and consider any relevant case law, our definition would stress that session:

could take place without an audience;

would not be advertised;

would not be amplified; and

would be spontaneous and not organised to take place on a regular basis.

We would also stress that the musicians involved do not receive payment.

As I said in our meeting, it is important to emphasise that if musicians regularly congregate at a pub to play, this could constitute regulated entertainment and so the pub would be likely to apply for a licence to provide regulated entertainment as the Cove House Inn already has. I would emphasise that we have had very few issues regarding incidental music to date. I would also like to emphasise that we are not keen to apply 'one size fits all' rules and so we will continue our approach to consider each case on its individual facts wherever possible.
ENDS