Westminster City Council has now adopted its Statement of Licensing Policy 2026. Full Council approved it on 16th September following a lengthy consultation and a summer in which licensing policy in the West End attracted rather more public attention than it usually enjoys.

I have a slightly unusual perspective on it.

I was involved in developing Westminster’s original West End stress-area policy around 1999 and 2000, during my years at the Council. So when I suggest that parts of the current regime deserve reconsideration, I do so with a certain degree of self-incrimination.

The original policy addressed genuine problems. Residents living in the heart of the West End were entitled to protection from noise, disorder and the consequences of an extraordinarily concentrated night-time economy. They still are.

But London’s hospitality industry has changed dramatically in the intervening quarter-century. Consumer habits have changed. Premises have changed. Transport patterns have changed. Expectations of operators have changed.

Regulation should at least be capable of changing with them.

That was the central theme of the consultation response I submitted earlier this year: look more closely at the evidence, distinguish one type of premises from another, examine the particular street and operating model, and concentrate regulatory effort upon the harm actually being caused.

The final policy contains some meaningful improvements. But it also leaves several important questions unanswered.

Hours: the clearest improvement

The most significant change concerns operating hours. The June consultation draft placed considerable emphasis on activity taking place before 10pm and stated that hours outside Westminster’s core hours would not generally be permitted. That approach has been softened materially.

The final wording treats core hours more as reference points than an absolute destination. Economic considerations expressly enter the assessment, and the previous strategic preference for activity predominantly before 10pm has disappeared. My analysis of the revised wording for the IOL was that this represented a genuine change rather than merely a change of tone.

The actual hours in the table have not changed. For pubs, bars and music-and-dance venues they remain, broadly, 11.30pm Monday to Thursday, midnight on Friday and Saturday and 10.30pm on Sunday, subject to the policy’s qualifications.

What has changed is the route by which an applicant can seek something different.

That matters. A well-run restaurant seeking an additional hour should increasingly be able to focus the argument where it belongs: upon that restaurant, in that location, with that management system. How many customers will remain? How will they leave? What is the acoustic environment? What happens outside? What transport is available? What controls are offered?

Those are much more useful questions than simply asking whether the clock has passed a line printed in a policy table.

There is an important dispersal point here too. Closing earlier is not necessarily the same thing as dispersing better. Several premises emptying simultaneously can create precisely the concentrations at taxi ranks, stations and on surrounding streets that licensing policy is intended to manage. Westminster itself has recently called for better late-night transport, including improvements to buses, taxis and private hire provision, recognising the relationship between transport capacity and people leaving the West End safely.  A credible dispersal plan ought therefore to matter.

Cumulative impact: a better process, but “exceptional” remains

The more difficult issue remains the West End Cumulative Impact Zone.

Again, it would be unfair to say that consultation achieved nothing. The revised policy requires consideration of the measures proposed by an applicant and whether modifications could make an application acceptable before refusal. Applications which reduce cumulative impact, and certain variations within core hours, receive more positive treatment. That encourages a committee to ask whether a workable licence can be fashioned rather than moving immediately from objection to refusal. But one phrase remains troublesome: “exceptional circumstances.”

The policy provides, in substance, that where the Council is satisfied an application will promote the licensing objectives, it will seek to grant it — but normally only in exceptional circumstances.

That produces an obvious question.

If an applicant has persuaded the licensing authority that the licensing objectives will be promoted, what additional quality is the word “exceptional” requiring?

If it is simply an observation that successful applications of this type are likely to be uncommon, that is one thing. If it establishes some further substantive hurdle, applicants need to know what that hurdle is.

One should not successfully complete the examination only to discover that the examiner was also hoping for a miracle.

The Council points to successful applications as evidence that the cumulative-impact policy is capable of flexibility. Its own policy material refers, for example, to the Blue Note Jazz proposal at St Martin’s Lane, where a licence was ultimately granted with amended hours and additional controls following the submission of acoustic, dispersal and other supporting material.  That is a useful illustration of an application being assessed on its merits. It also demonstrates the importance of evidence.

For operators contemplating an application within the cumulative-impact area, the lesson is not that the policy has disappeared. It plainly has not. It is that the evidential case for departing from its starting point has become even more important. Westminster’s own 2026 Cumulative Impact Assessment explains that cumulative impact may arise not simply from an individual premises but from the combined effect of licensed premises on crime, nuisance, transport and public services. The corresponding question should therefore be equally precise: what contribution will this particular proposal make to that cumulative effect, at these hours and in this location?

Special Consideration Zones: evidence still matters

The policy also retains eight Special Consideration Zones.

These are different from the West End Cumulative Impact Zone, and that distinction is important. The useful feature of a Special Consideration Zone should be that it tells an applicant something about local risk. If there is a particular late-night noise problem, a dispersal issue or pressure at a transport interchange, an operator should know about it and design the application accordingly. What a coloured area on a map cannot do is establish, by itself, what a particular applicant will do wrong.

The revised policy is more positive in tone and contains a useful commitment to reconsider a designation where its evidential basis no longer exists. But the express assurance in the earlier draft that a Special Consideration Zone did not involve a presumption of refusal was not carried through in the same form to the revised section. That should make careful handling of these applications particularly important. A Special Consideration Zone should identify matters requiring attention. It should not quietly become a cumulative-impact policy under another name.

“Vertical drinking”  and the danger of regulating by shorthand

Much of the media attention surrounding the consultation concerned so-called vertical drinking.It is a wonderful piece of regulatory vocabulary. Standing at the bar sounds sociable. “Vertical drinking” sounds as though it ought to be referred to a working group. But some of the headlines overstated what the policy actually does.

There is no general Westminster prohibition upon standing and drinking. Seating and table-service controls are possible measures, not universal requirements, and existing premises licences are not automatically rewritten. The more interesting question concerns outdoor drinking.

The policy contains fairly broad language suggesting that small premises whose customers drink outside whether on the highway or private open-air land  are likely to create significant public nuisance. That strikes me as an area where individual circumstances matter enormously.

Compare two pubs where one has a broad frontage, modest numbers, supervision and sensible hours whilst another has large numbers standing on a narrow pavement beneath residential windows late at night. The potential nuisance arising from the second says surprisingly little about the first.

A chair changes a customer’s posture. It does not necessarily change the volume of the conversation. Location, numbers, hours and management are likely to tell us rather more.

Regulate the harm, not merely the possibility of harm

That leads to a broader point.

Where an existing premises repeatedly causes nuisance or disorder, licensing law already provides powerful mechanisms for intervention.

Premises licences can be reviewed. Conditions can be imposed or strengthened. Noise legislation can be used. Hours can be curtailed. Management arrangements can be challenged.Those mechanisms have one considerable advantage: they are directed towards an identified problem.

Restricting an entirely different, responsibly managed applicant does not necessarily improve life for the resident being disturbed by the premises next door.

That is why enforcement deserves to sit closer to the centre of the licensing debate. The object cannot sensibly be to eliminate all possibility of inconvenience from one of the world’s busiest entertainment districts. Equally, the economic importance of hospitality cannot excuse genuine nuisance.

The useful question is rather more prosaic: What is the harm, what is causing it, and what is the proportionate means of dealing with it?

Participation must work for both residents and small operators

There is another issue which deserves considerably more attention than it normally receives: access to the licensing process itself.

Residents must be able to participate effectively in licensing proceedings. I have represented residents as well as businesses throughout my career and know how intimidating a licensing hearing can appear to someone encountering one for the first time. Good independent advice can make an enormous difference. But the same is true of a small operator. Not every applicant is a national hospitality company arriving with lawyers, acoustic consultants and licensing specialists. Some are independent restaurateurs or publicans investing much of what they own in their first premises.

My consultation response therefore raised questions about the operation of the Citizens Advice Westminster Licensing Advice Project: eligibility, repeated organisational representation, funding and the safeguards surrounding independence. Those questions were expressly framed as governance issues rather than allegations of improper decision-making.  The principle is straightforward. If public support exists to help people participate effectively in licensing proceedings, the arrangements governing that support should be transparent and Westminster should consider whether small independent operators need equivalent practical assistance in navigating an increasingly complex system.

Licensing cannot do everything

There is also a temptation, visible well beyond Westminster, to ask premises licensing to solve every desirable social or regulatory objective. The licensing system undoubtedly has a role in public safety, safeguarding, the protection of vulnerable people and the prevention of crime and nuisance.

But there are limits. Equality legislation has its own statutory framework. Protective security legislation has its own requirements. Planning, highways, environmental health and licensing each perform different functions. Where an issue genuinely engages one of the four licensing objectives, it belongs in the licensing assessment. But a premises licence should not become a convenient mechanism for duplicating every other regulatory regime. The final Good Operator Guidance usefully acknowledges that its recommendations are non-statutory and should be selected proportionately for individual premises. That distinction will matter in practice. Guidance should remain guidance.

So where has Westminster ended up?

The 2026 policy is not the wholesale liberalisation some in the hospitality industry may have hoped for. Nor is it simply the previous policy with a new cover. There has been genuine movement on hours. There is a more constructive route through parts of the cumulative-impact policy. The Council has also committed itself to further work on evidence, definitions and future review. Its wider public statements recognise both the need to protect residents and the importance of enabling responsible businesses to thrive.  But some of the longstanding architecture remains remarkably familiar.

The practical challenge will now be to ensure that the more flexible language of the new policy produces more genuinely individual decision-making.

For applicants, that means evidence will matter more, not less. Applications seeking later hours or operating inside sensitive areas should explain precisely how the premises will operate, how customers will arrive and depart, what happens outside and why the proposed controls address the risks identified.

For the Council, the next stage should involve continuing to test whether longstanding restrictions are supported by current evidence and whether more targeted interventions can achieve the same objectives with fewer unintended consequences.

I began my recent IOL talk by admitting my involvement in Westminster’s original stress-area policy. That history gives me no particular desire to see it preserved indefinitely but regulations, unlike old friends, do not become more persuasive merely because we have known them for years.

The essential questions remain simple.

What is the harm? How is this proposal connected to it? Why would the controls offered by the applicant be insufficient?

A convincing answer deserves respect but an unanswered question deserves further work.