After "A good night out!" the hangover

The West End has been the Wild West for pubs and clubs for far too long. This is the view of residents and now their elected representatives have taken action.

Westminster Council has introduced more stringent rules for the granting of licenses to operate after one in the morning, with a "one in, one out policy". In effect this means that any new bar or club can only open when another has closed.

The Council is continuing to carry out extensive consultation over its new licensing policy in order to head off legal challenges which might be mounted by individual club owners and the entertainment industry.

Simon Milton, the Leader of Westminster Council, recently described the streets of central London as being in "near-anarchy" at night. In this context he said that it "makes no sense to make matters worse by increasing the number of late-night licences." He added that the police had asked the council, on law and disorder grounds, to grant no more of these licences. In May the Council received the backing of the High Court which rules that it was reasonable and appropriate to have a policy presuming against new West End licences.

Local authorities throughout the country will pay close attention to these developments as they prepare for the effects of the deregulation envisaged by the White Paper on licensing.

Resident's associations and other community organisations in central London have banded together to meet the threat to their quality of life. A Licensing Working Party, set up jointly between Community Consultative Groups and the Central Westminster Police, produced its Final Report at the end of June entitled After 'A Good Night Out', 'The Hangover'. This report points out that Covent Garden and Soho were originally residential communities where a great many people still lived – indeed, the population of these areas, in common with other city centres, has been rising of recent years. These residents "don't want to see the West End turned into a down-market alcohol and drug-fuelled slum".

Acknowledging that many licensed premises "are very well run and contribute hugely to the vitality and vibrancy of the West End", the report is unconvinced by the allegation that the problems can be put down to "inconsiderate or rogue operators and that those can be tackled over time". Rather, it says, "this working party believes that the problem is that, in the West End, there are now just too many outlets in too small an area for it to cope. The sheer number of people in the area and on the street is too great to manage many nights. High noise levels, the level of crime, inadequate transport and a declining infrastructure in the public realm are all clear symptoms. We have, reached and exceeded the sensible capacity limits".

The Government is proceeding with proposals to reform the licensing laws (see Alert passim), abolishing the concept of permitted hours and creating the potential for twenty-four hour drinking. Whilst the report understands the need for modernisation and simplification – Matthew Bennett, the Chairman of the Working Party, is himself a Soho restaurateur – it draws attention to the fact that the Government is acting on the assumption that its proposals will reduce binge-drinking and anti-social behaviour. "But where is their evidence that this beneficial result will occur? What we have seen in this area is that more and more later licences mean that these issues are merely pushed later into the night. Drunkenness and irresponsible behaviour have tended to increase rather than decrease and there are widespread adverse impacts."

The report argues that the Government, before it moves ahead with deregulation, should recognise the pressures which relaxation will create and address these at the same time. "Proper reform to improve central urban life would put in place an effective system of management, regulation, enforcement, noise control, and improvements to the capacity of the night life infrastructure to cope with the growth in activity it is likely to generate."

Matthew Bennett says that "the government seems to be sleep walking into a major urban policy mess, led along the path probably by the lobby groups of the drinks industry and the inability of civil servants to admit that maybe they got the balance wrong when they put the White Paper together." The report goes on to say that deregulation is cheap whereas putting in place safeguards for the quality of life of the people of affected areas requires effort and investment. A cynic might speculate that this may be why we are getting deregulation on its own.