Sham - your posts of 6.30 and 11.42 both very good.

RP. The "Public Entertainment Licence" was a licence needed if the entertainment (of a relevant kind) was "public". If it was in a club it wasn't public so it did not need a licence. Not a matter of "avoidance" as you so judgmentally call it at all.

The important issue for the act is that the "two in a bar" rule was ludicrously restrictive in some respects. Now it is worse. There is no sensible reason for music performed live without amplification to need to be licensed.

I may have missed another late change, but last time I read the Act from cover to cover, it did not "explicitly prevent any conditions that could have been made as planning requirements". What the guidance may say is another thing. The Act did, if I correctly remember, say that the LAs should have regard to the guidance. But one may perfectly well "have regard" to something, and having regarded it, decide that some other factor outweighs that thing. So I think you will find that the "planning factor" is not dead. Indeed if it were, and a pub between houses (assuming for present purposes that it needed no other planning alterations) wanted to have live bands with large PA rigs, it would be silly if "planning" requirements to control noise breakout could not be imposed. But it is just as silly if they can be imposed if no amplification is to be used.

As to 5.19 and "spontaneous", I remain of the opinion that if you do not stop an activity of which you are aware, and which is occurring on your premises, then you are making the premises available for that purpose. This would be consistent with the jurisprudence about "permitting" premises to be used for the consumption of drugs. If my view is not good law, why not?

I am inclined to the view that a juke box is not an entertainment facility because when you play a record on one, you do not "make" music. If however there were a dance floor than the jukebox might very well be an entertainment facility.

Incidentally, it seems to me that if a computer shop were to hire a computer (even one without speakers) to a nerd who was a wiz with cubase, so that the said nerd might use more processing power to record some phatt tracks, all at the computer shop (he can write them to DVD and take them home) - guess what? They would be providing facilities for making music and so need a licence.