Licensing - review

If you wish to challenge an application for a premises licence, for example for an outdoor music festival in your area, we can help you prepare objections to the application; or if a premises licence has already been granted, we can help you apply for a review of the premises licence. 

Case Studies

1) On behalf of a parish council, Harrison Grant have objected to an application for a licence to hold a large music festival in a rural area of the south east. If approved, the licence will permit the organisers to hold an annual, multi-day, festival for 15,000 people, for an indefinite period. We have called on the licensing authority to reject the application as it is contrary to their licensing policy and have cited a number of key safety concerns, including the narrow, country lanes proposed for access, as well as unsuitable car-parking facilities. We have also argued that the environmental damage a festival of this size could cause to the site, which includes a number of protected trees, is wholly unacceptable. A licensing hearing will take place June 2019.

2) We were instructed by the Friends of Finsbury Park to review the Premises Licence granted by Haringey Council to Live Nation for the Wireless music festival.   

The Friends of Finsbury Park's application for a licence review of Wireless Festival was heard by Haringey Licensing Committee on the evenings of 15 and 16 October 2018.  Powerful testimony from the Friends and other residents. 

https://haringey.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/380408

The decision of the Committee has now been received and is at 

https://hglaw.egnyte.com/dl/GaXS5gXaWd

Susan Ring of Harrison Grant was instructed by the Friends of Finsbury Park together with noise expert Richard Vivian of Big Sky Acoustics; the barrister Charles Streeten of Francis Taylor Building appeared for the Friends at the Licensing Committee meeting. 

The view of the Friends of Finsbury Park on the licence decision is as follows: 

We are pleased that the committee has taken into consideration the testimony of our witnesses and noise expert on the excessive and invasive noise that is produced by the festival and agreed with the Friends’ case that loud music from Wireless, including bass level noise, has caused a public nuisance.  We therefore welcome the decision of the committee to incorporate our proposed noise limits and noise monitoring conditions.

We are also pleased that the event will finish earlier on a Sunday, as we had suggested. However, several of our proposed licensing conditions have been disregarded by the committee, of which the most important is our request to reduce the number of attendees at the event.

Even with improved management of the festival, it is simply not possible to reduce the excessive level of public nuisance caused by a festival and the impact it has on the park without reducing the number of attendees below the current limit of 50,000.

Live Nation and the Friends of Finsbury Park have until 12 November 2018 to appeal the licensing decision. 

The new conditions imposed by the Licensing Committee decision were widely reported but in fact misreported.  The premises licence already included the condition that the licensee shall request that that performers do not play any 'vulgar, obscene' songs and shall ensure that 'attire' of performers do not offend the public. The new noise conditions were not widely reported.