In practice, I note that the licensee of at least one of the pubs you were concerned with did in fact obtain a licence. Is there evidence that the policies of this or other authorities are preventing licences being granted for this type of music and preventing sessions from taking place? I know this was a huge concern while the bill was going through Parliament, but the actual effects since it was past don't appear to have been as bad as originally feared.

After much argument, The Cove House Inn eventually did pay to obtain the entertainment licence. This partly to enable the session but mainly to enable the conventional performances of exempt live music, with less than two peformers, which were held every Friday, to encompass larger groups.

The New Star session in fact preceeded the Cove session. It had been running unlicensed for at least two years before the enforcement action at the Cove and the New Star session continued unlicensed for two years after the Cove enforcement had established that the New Star session also required the same licence.

As this session was the only live music held there, the licensee of the New Star was not prepared to pay for an activity that had taken place without incident or complaint for over 5 years. So this session was prevented when the Council wrote a letter containing the same 'encouragement' as was earlier sent to the Cove.

There is certainly evidence that the New Star session was deterred by the so-called licensing requirements and that the Council's employees were also prepared to see the Cove session end, had the licensee not taken action to save it.

There is also evidence that the 5 May 2006 advice prevented the New Star session from re-starting under the benefit of the incidental exemption after the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003. Had the advice been different, I would have led it myself, as the licensee was very keen to re-start the session.

The general effect on sessions of the Licensing Act 2003 has not been measured. There is no way of telling if the effect was as bad as feared and that of course depends on how bad you feared it might be. However, if sessions survive at all - we could probably agree that this is despite the clumsy legislation and its patchy enforcement, rather than from any resulting benefit?

After all this time - there is still no satisfactory answer for anyone who may ask you the simple question of whether sessions are licensable or not. I would suggest that most current sessions take place only in premises that already do have Premises Licence Entertainment Permission for the provision of performances of live music and that this simply confuses the issue.