‘The council’s actions bring it into conflict with the law as well as residents’

• ARGUMENTS on the evening and night-time economy (ENTE) strategy and licensing policy are not a battle between businesses on one side and residents on the other, with the council a neutral bystander.

The actual conflict is between the council’s apparent wish to deregulate licensing, and what the Licensing Act says.

As residents’ groups which cover areas with 65 per cent of the existing night-time economy, we want to live harmoniously with all the businesses in our areas. We are their customers, and they give us jobs.

The split between spending in the evening (before 11pm) and night (after 11pm) at weekends is 75 to 25 per cent. Hence most of the ENTE is usually not a problem. It is the post-11pm activity, and especially that after midnight (15 per cent), that most often gives rise to issues for residents.

Our only request two weeks ago was that the concept of balance between businesses and residents was incorporated into the vision statement in the ENTE strategy.

This was what the London mayor and the citizens’ assembly have said; but the council wouldn’t do this. They said that the concept of balance already runs through the whole strategy.

The extensions of hours and removal of cumulative impact areas are not in the strategy the council’s cabinet agreed.

They want to set up a panel to oversee how the strategy is implemented. Surely this should happen before any revision of Camden’s licensing policy? How can we have a policy without a strategy to inform it? They need to be consistent.

And any revision of policy should take fully into account the views of the panel, in which we should be directly involved as the communities most affected.

We are not naïve. The council already tried to rubber-stamp “a radical rethink” of licensing policy before publishing the ENTE strategy. It was put on hold after objections from the police and from residents’ groups. No doubt they will try again.

They want to deregulate the ENTE that operates after midnight. They want to do this by allowing businesses to operate later without having to address the impacts that they have on those who live around them.

If the council does this then it is not acting as a neutral bystander. They are favouring the needs of a small proportion of businesses over the risk of increased crime and health harm to residents. This will put the council into conflict not just with residents but with the law.

As we said clearly at cabinet, the strategy has a lot of good ideas in it and has our support even though we take issue with the lack of balance in the vision statement.

The council should put any revision of licensing policy on hold and focus on its stated priority of forming the promised evening and night-time panel.

COVENT GARDEN COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION & TENANTS RESIDENTS ASSOCIATIONS CAMDEN TOWN on behalf of 25 Camden Civic Society Organisations