Regarding some issues raised in the EDM (see column 345 in this link):-

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: ...A wedding party, for example, does not constitute an event conducted in the presence of members of the public. It involves invited guests. A music shop does involve members of the public but the main purpose of the music shop is to sell music, not to invite people in to listen to music. Those people are not charged for coming into the shop to listen to music. There is no question of music shops, wedding parties or anything else of that sort being covered by the Bill. That is simply not provided for.

That blows out a large portion of the EDM.

Regarding the "carol singers" issue (link here):-

Carol singers going door-to-door, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, or taking part in a religious service are not licensable.

So Shambles, your third concern is not a problem. However (the quote used):-

People singing carols in a supermarket or a railway station and so on would need to be covered by a premises licence or a temporary event notice. That is hardly different from the present situation.

Sounds serious. But see this link for the current situation. Two useful paragraphs:-

You will have to wear any ID provided by the manager. In the UK, you do not need to inform your local authority if you are collecting on supermarket premises as these are classed as private property.

If you wish to collect in a public place, you must apply to your local authority (or in London, the Metropolitan Police if the collection will be in the Metropolitan Police area; or the Common Council of the City of London if you are in the City) at least one month in advance for permission and comply with any regulations that they specify.

So it seems that under the new rules, if you're singing in a shop then the shop will have to have a (temporary) license - that's their problem, in the same way as licensing a pub is the landlord's problem. This may seem overkill for carol singing, but consider if instead of the carol singers performing for a few hours on Saturday morning, they had a rock band playing outside the supermarket at 10pm on Monday night, with all the knobs cranked up to 11? That would be *very* popular with local residents with kids, right? ;-) The quest for this new system is to get one set of rules that covers everything without adding a bunch of special cases, because special cases never work and just provide lawyers with a way of spending people's money.

For public carol singing and collecting money, it seems the situation is unchanged - you just need to comply with local authority requirements.

Graham.