Hamish,

Let me summarise the questions that I was posing to you:

Did you ask the most appropriate question?

Was the officer correct in his answer to your question?

Would he have given the same answer to a different question?

Would the Local Authority accept guidance from the officer to prosecute in either of those circumstances?

As to your scenario the key questions are whether you are receiving a profit from the activity of being the event organiser in addition to receiving an appropriate fee as a musician, whether it would be tested in court and whether this can be proved to the court's satisfaction.

In most cases as leader of the group of musicians you would receive the total fee for all musicians and would subseqently divide it by some mutually agreed formula.

The act does not even prevent an organiser being paid a wage or salary for undertaking the organisation. Nor does it prevent the hospital from making a profit if it charges for admission. Organisation for individal profit is what makes a private event licensable. i.e. if the additional door money (or some proportion of it) when an extra member of the audience buys a ticket goes into the pocket of the individual organiser, this would be organisation for profit. (It occurs to me that this could raise a question over musicians who are hired for the door money or a proportion thereof at least if they also organise the function. I have not seen anyone raise that aspect before.)

I accept that the act (in common with all others) is confusing and can lead to unsympathetic enforces causing all sorts of problems at least until case law (and possibly future SIs) sort out interpretation. However, much of the input to these threads goes over the top in pessimism. I only seek a more reasonable balance.