Where the details do not achieve the stated objective - condemn them.

I think that one will do on its own - but more positively I think that we have to try to make the details work to encourage live music - even if that was never one of the Act's objectives.

The point I was making is that the operator of a cafe - even after or perhaps especally after reading this guidance - would not know if they required a Pemises Licence to have background live music, although they may be pretty sure that they did NOT need one for a juke box or MUZAK.

If they were brave enough to go ahead with backgound live music, it has to be accepted from reading the guidance, that the line is a very thin one - one as subjective as the level of volume? They would have to be brave, as they would have to be prepared to be prosecuted and take it to court, if their concept of incidental, was not the same as the licensing officers. The result being that they would pay for a Premises Licence or more likely not hold any live music at all - but continue with recoreded music. Does all that sound familar?

The accepted status quo among licensing officers has always been in general, that recorded music is OK but live music is 'iffy'. That is set to continue as old habits die hard and this bad habit is sadly present in the drafters words in this guidance, and that will be latched onto. However and importantly, the words of the Act now make no such distinction. If recorded music is exempt, it is only so because it is incidental. Where this recorded music is considered as incidental and exempt - then live music is also exempt. The Act may not define the word but it does not and cannot have one meaning for recorded music and another for live music.

I feel the drafters of this guidance are trying - by referring for example to the playing of incidental recorded music and the performance of incidental live music - to make or perpetuate a distinction between them, that the words of Act do not make. I would suggest that the word in the final guidance should be the same for both.

For this guidance then suggests that the oprerator ask the licensing authority, who will have read exactly the same guidance. As it is them the operator is going to pay his Premise License fee and the annual inspection charge to - is it really likely that cash-strapped licensing officers with the mindset that they have shown us - are likely to advise this operator that he does not have to pay them?

Or are they to follow the guidance 5.14 (page 48) of the latest draft guidance? It should be noted that there is nothing in the legislation to prevent shops, stores and supermarkets proposing the inclusion of regulated entertainment in their premises licences.

Even though the above rather assumes that these premises will already hold one and ignores those premises, with no licensable activities, that may not need to pay for one.

This is why I think it so important that we ensure that our local licensing committees are the ones that will set policy on matters like - what is incidental. That these are set on what the words of the Act say - rather than what civil servants (in this guidance) and local officials tell these committees, what the Act says.

Important to remember also that our MPs will first have to pass this guidance.