Busking Is About to Be Banned From Many London Streets
When people eventually return to the streets of central London, they may find that buskers have all but gone.
During the pandemic, the number of people likely to throw some coins into a busker’s case is smaller than ever. One busker told VICE World News that since March he has been able to perform for three weeks in total. With people unable to perform to crowds and strict restrictions on even going outside, it is already hard enough for buskers and street performers.
But Westminster City Council – the local authority that administers the central London borough – and the wealthy businesses lobbying on the issue, want to make it even harder. When people eventually return to the streets of central London following the pandemic, they may find that buskers have all but disappeared.
Last month, the council voted to introduce a compulsory licensing system for buskers. When it comes into effect on the 5th of April 2021, it will be the strictest series of measures in any part of the UK, effectively making busking illegal on around 1,000 London streets.
Currently, if you want to busk in London, you can do so anywhere that is public property (with the exception of Camden and Uxbridge city centre, which require a licence). Westminster City Council is set to change this. In order to busk in an area that includes what used to be the busiest parts of the capital – Covent Garden, Oxford Street and Trafalgar Square – you will need to pay £20 every six months for a licence.
As well as requiring that all street performers pay £40 annually to busk, the council is pushing through a range of other bizarre, restrictive measures. These include the obligation to purchase Public Liability Insurance for up to £2 million; the requirement that the performance isn’t audible to people in “nearby premises”; the banning of fire and sharp objects; and the stipulation that buskers perform for 40 minutes, leaving a 20-minute gap before the next performance. Westminster is also limiting the number of valid busking pitches to just 20 non-amplified and six amplified spots.
David Fisher is a busker who sings and plays the guitar and harmonica. Like many street performers, he fears that Westminster will set a precedent. He performs in around 50 locations around the country. “If I were to have to get a licence for every single one of those, it would be, quite aside from a bureaucratic nightmare, also very expensive. It’s completely unviable.”
Two of the proposed amplified pitches are, according to buskers, totally inadequate. One is in Marble Arch, which buskers say does not attract enough people; the other is by the statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square, stranded on a traffic island between some of the busiest roads in the city. “What are they trying to do, kill people?” says Nick Broad, who runs the Busking Project, a non-profit organisation that advocates on behalf of buskers worldwide. The council did not respond when questioned on this.
A consultation held between September and November 2020 found that 70 percent of the 893 respondents disagreed with the proposals, with 94 percent of those people feeling the restrictions were too harsh.
The council says that it receives around 2,200 complaints every year “about noise and crowding caused by street performances in Westminster”. But an FOI carried out by performers suggested that not all of the complaints were about street performances: at least 27 of 3,990 complaints in 2018 and 2019 were about rickshaw drivers; 39 were about religious preachers; at least 56 refer to a man shouting through a traffic cone; at least 32 are about beggars; one was about a councillor who was harassing a busker.
Broad and the street performers VICE World News spoke to say that most of the complaints are the fault of a tiny minority, and point to existing powers that could be used to deal with problems.
595 of the 2,200 complaints, for instance, were about amplified busking after 9PM, which could be dealt with under pre-existing UK laws (section 62 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, for example).
“It really feels like they’ve treated us like we’re stupid and we don’t have any value,” says Matthew Keys, a comedy-magic street performer…
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