How does all of this leave the fringe element of festivals - which are mainly sessions in pubs?

They fail in their statutory duty, which they will claim the law does not allow them to do. Or in the case of my Council organised folk festival, they only choose pubs with PELs for their festival sessions and close down long-running local sessions without PELs. They did this a month before this years event.

In other areas, they will try their very best to ignore them or maintain that they do not have enough staff or use some other excuse. As their have done since 1964 and 1984, all the time this legislation has been in place.

If they have largely ignored sessions for so long, it seems a little strange that with the short time this legislation has to run, that they simply cannot continue to do this, or better still address ways to enable them or to simply stall. It is clear that sessions are a different animal from conventional paid entertainment, and unlikely to be enabled by a licensee paying for the PEL.

To wake-up in Sheffield and take action against sessions (or make no distinction between conventional entertainment) at this point, knowing that this will just prevent long-running sessions and not sell any PELs, in my view, is just reckless and unforgivable.

Nothing personal Sarah. I am sure you and many of your fellows are fine folk. I have just heard all of this 'waffle' from licensing and legal officers too many times before. There needs to be demands from the public to ensure that our Council depts start to use some joined-up thinking.