Richard Bridge, if "ancilliary" would allow more unlicensed music than "incidental" you are to be congratulated for suggesting it. If incidental allows more than ancilliary the DCMS are to ge congratulated on retaining it. Only a lawyer could guess which is more generous and if you had two lawyers there would be at least three opinions about which was the wider.

However, the important point is that there is an exemption where the music is incidental/ancilliary to anything other than licensed entertainment. That explicitly includes the licensed supply of alcohol for money. Furthermore clause 7 of the schedule has equal status to clause 1 and any other clause.

Consequently there is a boundary that will eventually be drawn by case law between legal and illegal unlicensed music in a bar and the boundary cannot be at the no music end of that continuum. It might even be at the opposite end so that any music in a bar that is serving alcohol is legal - but I doubt it and even doubt that going that far would be sensible. However, the boundary that the courts have to draw is where the music becomes the major activity and the licensed trade (presumably) becomes incidental.

I don't pretend to know how the courts will draw that line, or how local authorities will decide what to take to court to test the line - and I fear no-one else knows either. However we should not ignore the fact that the line awaits its drawing. Nor should we cease trying to get licences to include music, because that must of necessity be more generous in what it allows.

RichardP