Is this going a bit too far?

[andy jackson]

Times article

 

What I think is another case of council jobsworths!

[Ynot]

What I think is another case of council jobsworths!

Cynic

 

Or perhaps some free publicity for the circus...?

 

/Cynic

[PDD]

I raise the question, why should circuses not require a licence? Are they covered by something else? If not, as a form of performance, surely they should be under the same requirements of the Licensing Act as theatres, etc? I know not.

[Ynot]

I raise the question, why should circuses not require a licence? Are they covered by something else? If not, as a form of performance, surely they should be under the same requirements of the Licensing Act as theatres, etc? I know not.

I suspect they'd be happy to pay for a license, but a circus licence not bits from several different licences which they fall into at the fringes...

[karl]

At first glance it seems like overkill but if you make an exception for one case then others start creaping out of the wood work. If three notes doesn't count as live music what about 6 or 12 or 2 dozen? If being a clown exempts you from the rule does that mean bands can be exempt provided they hit each other with custard pies between songs?

 

OK, so I'm being silly but there are a lot of people who seem to make it their business to bend rules as far as they can and test the limits. Turning a blind eye just gives them ammo. Its all well and good saying inspectors should use common sense but only if everybody else plays by the same rules.

[ImagineerTom]

The problem here is a recent change to licensing laws. Originally a circus applied for all the relervant licenses and permissions at their first pitch of the season (traditionally held in their home town where the licensing departments were familiar with the quirks of circus licensing and understood the rules) these license(s) were then good for the circus's entire tour that year provided no significant changes were made to the show or the equipment used. Local authorities carried out their own random spot checks to ensure that everything was as the original license stated but that is all they had to worry about.

 

The recent change in the law means that EVERY sit a circus visits has to be individually licensed by the local authorities (so there's now 20-30 different authorities to negoitate with, each site costing around £1000 to license) who each impliment the rules slightly differently and often don't really understand what it is they're licensing. In addition to this problem there's a secondary issue that these new licenses are ABSOLUTE, you have to state and define EVERYTHING and if any of it changes then your license is invalid and must be re-applied for. This was a major problem last summer when the rain ment that some circus's had to pitch up on a different field (over the road) or on a different area of the site they had originally intended to because the licensed pitch was flooded. These circus's then had to apply for NEW licenses even though all that had changed was they'd pitch'd 100yrds to the left.

 

There's now a whole industry of people who negotiate licenses for circus because of the mountain of paperwork it involves. One show I've worked on now spends £38k a year on licenses and compliance when under the old system it was £2k.

 

It's a crazy situation and one (as the artical says) the CPA are trying to get an ammendment to to bring it back in line with the old situation.