Press release - 25 January 2005

Worrying news for live music

Live music events in Britain could be under serious threat after 7 February when the Government's new licensing regime comes into force. Fee levels recently published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will see a new mandatory fee of at least £1,000 being applied to events where more than 5,000 people are present at any one time.

The first anyone heard of these additional fees for large temporary events was October last year when the DCMS published its consultation on fee levels. The NCA's survey of its own members highlighted the huge impact such charges would have on festivals. Responding to the DCMS consultation, the NCA stressed that many of Britain's live arts events would simply collapse under the burden of additional fees, which at that time were suggested to be a minimum of £5,000.

During the consultation period festival organisers and local authorities from across the country contacted the NCA office, concerned about the impact that additional fees could have in their area. Licensing authorities are the supposed beneficiaries of these fees, which will be used to cover the costs of safety inspections at large temporary events, but many of them wanted the NCA to hear their concern about the loss of control over their own local development. Festivals can be a crucial stimulant to the local economy, especially in rural areas. Taking away the local authority's ability to promote such events will undermine many development strategies.

The final fee levels represent both good and bad news for those temporary events that the DCMS considers 'exceptionally large'. After considering responses from the NCA and other interested parties, the DCMS acknowledged that their proposed additional fee levels had 'been set too high at the lower end of the scale'. However, the changes they have made will not necessarily do enough to support smaller large scale events.

The NCA's main recommendation to the DCMS was that the fees set by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport should be a ceiling rather than a mandatory fee. This would enable licensing authorities to promote festivals that they felt to be good for the region by waiving the fee altogether. The DCMS has not taken up this suggestion, though it did suggest that local authorities could pay the fee from their own budgets. The NCA will continue to campaign for a full investigation into the probable implications of the new additional fee on festivals across the country.

NCA Director Victoria Todd said: "This policy is just confusing. It undermines a sector which is pressing all the right political buttons: economic development, rural and inner-city regeneration, community cohesion and so forth. Not to mention denying a huge swathe of people access to live entertainment by effectively closing down their festivals. I hope that the DCMS will work with the NCA to find a way around the negative implications of this legislation."

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