If a landlord provides an old guitar or just a uke with one string the premises would be exempt?

Well, as the Act currently stands - any instrument provided to enable the public to entertain themselves in music and dancing would be licensable in itself as an Entertainment Facility. That is why the London street pianos were caught.

The activity in question could possibly have been exempt as a performance (to an audience) of live music that was incidental etc. but this was no use, as the Act had made the provision of the instrument itself a licensable Entertainment Facility.

The penny has finally dropped and the DCMS realised that this was a problem, if they wanted to encourage small scale piano playing under the incidental exemption - which they now appear to do. But the words of the Act need to be changed to enable this.

So the proposal in the consultation will exempt the provision of any instrument (or music stands) from being licensable Entertainment Facilities. So far so good....

But even if the provison of instuments to enable the public to entertain themselves is exempt as proposed - the provision of the premises themselves to enable the public to entertain themselves in music and dancing is still caught as a licensable Entertainment Facility.