An update to all our great restaurants and bars with pavement licences. As I indicated in a previous post the pavement licensing regime is to be made permanent by virtue of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill 2023. This proposed legislation is slowly progressing through its parliamentary stages but its final stages will not be completed in time for the summer recess and so that Government has tabled an order extending the current temporary regime up to 30th September 2024 (as predicted!).

Secondly, there is a proposed amendment in the House of Lords by the excellent Anne McIntosh who has done so much work on this one, regarding agent of change and specifically seeking to introduce the principle into licensing law and applications. The “agent of change principle” means the principle requiring planning policies and decisions to ensure that new development can be integrated effectively with existing businesses and community facilities so that those businesses and facilities do not have unreasonable restrictions placed on them as a result of developments permitted after they were established. The proposals will amongst other things require developers building e.g residential accommodation near to EXISTING licensed premises to take steps to ensure that the new development is not affected by the existing bar/club. This will require the production of a noise impact assessment demonstrating that the new development will not be affected by noise from an existing venue with regulated entertainment.

A breath of fresh air after some of us have been arguing for this for many years and it is to be hoped that Anne’s proposal is accepted by Government. This may have assisted me in the Ministry of Sound matter several years ago when Southwark and the Mayor of London were required to determine a proposal for a large residential block right opposite to the iconic venue!