The live music industry and wider night-time sector is busy scrutinising new plans announced by the UK government this weekend to “modernise outdated planning and licensing rules” in order to cut the “cost, complexity and time it takes to open and operate hospitality venues”, including bars, clubs and music venues.
As part of those plans, the government says it will introduce the ‘agent of change’ principle “into national planning and licensing policy”, ensuring that “developers will be responsible for soundproofing their buildings” if they build new residential properties next to existing night-time businesses.
The ‘agent of change’ principle is something the live sector has long supported. It was added to planning guidelines in England in 2018, but – during a Parliamentary inquiry on grassroots venues last year – MPs were told that those guidelines have been too open to interpretation at a local authority level, with trade group LIVE adding that the principle “needs more teeth”.
Bigging up the new plans, Business And Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds says, “Red tape has stood in the way of people’s business ideas for too long. Today we’re slashing those barriers to giving small business owners the freedom to flourish”.
In addition to ramping up the agent of change principle, the government also hopes to streamline the granting of planning permission and licences to night-time businesses, while also creating ‘hospitality zones’ around the UK.
“From faster café openings to easier alfresco dining”, Reynolds continues, “our Plan For Change will put the buzz back into our town centres and money back into the pockets of local entrepreneurs, because when small businesses thrive, communities come alive”.
The devil, of course, will be in the detail when it comes to how these plans will actually be implemented and the extent to which they have a positive impact in tangible terms.
As for top line ambitions, ministers say they will streamline the licensing of night-time businesses by introducing a new National Licensing Policy Framework. That, they hope, “will make it easier to convert disused shops into hospitality venues, and protect long-standing pubs, clubs and music venues from noise complaints by new developments”.
The new ‘hospitality zones’ will be specific areas in towns and cities “where permissions for alfresco dining, street parties and extended opening hours will be fast-tracked”.
For existing clubs and venues, the ramping up of the agent of change principle is probably the most important part of these plans. Under that principle developers building new residential properties next to existing venues must anticipate and mitigate future noise issues in order to get planning permission for their developments.
It aims to end the ludicrous scenario where new residential buildings go up next to an existing venue – often because the venue made a previously run down neighbourhood desirable again – and then new residents complain about the noise. Those complaints then result in noise abatement orders that can hinder and threaten the venue’s operations.
The music industry has been campaigning for years for the agent of change principle to become a standard and rigorous component of the planning permission process all over the UK. In 2018 it was added to the National Licensing Policy Framework in England, which guides how local authorities go about considering and granting planning permission, which was seen as a big win at the time.
However, during its inquiry into grassroots venues last year, Parliament’s Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee noted that, “while the introduction of agent of change principles has been welcomed by the sector”, fears back in 2018 that “there might be a risk in how planning authorities would interpret and apply its wording with consistency and certainty across the country has indeed been borne out”.
LIVE told the committee that while, “fundamentally”, we all “welcome agent of change, it needs more teeth”. And UK Music said, “to ensure reliable protections for venues, it is essential to enshrine agent of change in law and move beyond its current implementation through guidance and policy”.
The government, with these new plans, seems to be responding to that call, with the aim of ensuring that the agent of change principle properly applies in practice as well as in theory, and that local authorities ensure developers not only commit to mitigate future noise issues, but actually do mitigate them.
We shall see how that works out.
