The following was sent to WPBC.

Dear Mr Gilmour

I realise that you are paid to emphasise the positive in Weymouth Borough Council's arts policy. But it requires special gifts to reconcile the description 'enlightened and fun loving' with a council that puts local amateur music-making under covert surveillance, and then prevents its performance on the basis of case law from 1793 - even where there were no noise complaints, and no public safety risks.

Any decent licensing lawyer, not under council employ, will tell you that there is no need to interpret the law so restrictively. The handful of 18th and 19th century case law precedents cited in support of the Council's enforcement policy bear little relevance to contemporary informal folk sessions in pubs. Indeed there is one case, Brearley vs Morely (1899), conveniently ignored by Weymouth, which would appear to be in the musicians favour.

In this context, being 'fully committed to the arts' really does sound like rhetoric. What would seem to be a more accurate statement is that Weymouth is fully committed to providing the arts on its own terms, rather than fully committed to allowing the community to make its own cultural life.

The hint of a somewhat patriarchal, and patronising treatment of the local community tends to be reinforced by your comments about Weymouth's 'cultural strategy'. The production of a Cultural Strategy for the borough should follow wide-ranging consultation with the community - not, as your statement implies, the other way around.

A senior Weymouth police officer said to me that he would rather see the council strictly enforce public entertainment licensing conditions in nightclubs than come down heavily against innocuous live music in local pubs.

And one significant fact you do not mention is that the premises that cause most nuisance to local residents already hold public entertainment licences (PELs). That is because having a PEL is an administrative prerequisite before a Late Opening Certificate can be granted.

Yours sincerely

Hamish Birchall