Local authority suspends street entertainment policy after JR launched
A local authority has agreed to suspend a controversial policy regulating street entertainment after campaigners launched judicial review proceedings in the High Court.
Liverpool City Council insisted that it was always going to carry out a review three months after the terms and conditions came into force.
The policy requires buskers to obtain a permit and apply for pitches in advance of performances.
According to law firm Kirwans, which is acting for the claimant, a section of the policy – dubbed by the media as a “Simon Cowell clause” – allowed council officers and the police to stop buskers “judged by them to be musically unsatisfactory”. A failure to cooperate could have led to trespass charges.
The law firm claimed that the council’s policy was unlawful, that the process was unreasonable and that the terms and conditions were “irrational, oppressive and/or disproportionate to the extent that no reasonable decision maker, properly informed, could have arrived at them”.
On 24 August His Honour Judge Waksman QC, sitting as a High Court judge, ordered that the claimant’s application for interim injunctive relief be refused after Liverpool gave an undertaking not to apply or enforce the terms and conditions pending determination of the judicial review proceedings or a further court order.
David Kirwan, managing partner of Kirwans, said: “Legal proceedings appear to have focused the minds of Liverpool City Council’s leaders and we are pleased that implementation of the unfair policy has been suspended, therefore protecting buskers in the short term at least.
“Our belief is that the new policy is unreasonable and unlawful and that ultimately a High Court judge will share our view at judicial review.”
The law firm said it was supporting the Keep Streets Live! campaign and representing 19-year-old Liverpool busker Siobhan McDermott.
A spokesman for Liverpool said: “We believe that the policy on busking was introduced lawfully and reasonably but we do not want to see public money spent on legal proceedings which we feel are unnecessary.
“Given that the policy on street entertainment was always going to be reviewed after three months we believe that the best way forward would be for the all parties to discuss issues of concern during that review. As such we have agreed that there will be no further implementation of this policy pending the findings of the review.”
Philip Hoult