Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 163)
TUESDAY 28 OCTOBER 2008
MR MALCOLM
CLAY AND
MR MARTIN
BURTON
Q160 Mr Evans: The Act has been going
for some time now. I presume that most circuses have applied for
premises licences in virtually all the sites that you would ever
appear.
Mr Clay: It does not quite work
like that because a lot of councils will allocate their site to
one circus one year but say next year we want a different circus
or the year after we want a different circus. The licence is specific
to that operator and not to the site. You may have a succession
of annual premises applications for the same site. Circuses are
forever looking at different sites. You lose sites due to redevelopment
or local events that are taking place in the park. Certainly we
are over the first wave of applications, but this is going to
be a continuing process because of the change of sites. We are
not altogether sure what we will do when we change our tents and
seating because an application --- To the layman perhaps all circus
tents are alike but they are not quite the same, nor is the seating
quite the same. So when we go back two years later and it is a
new tent (because tents have a limited life), are we then required
to make a new application? This is why the system just does not
fit the industry.
Q161 Mr Evans: You have just mentioned
the costs which I would have said are substantial because that
money has got to come from somewhere and it is a cost that you
did not have to meet before this regime came in. In your estimation
is the new licensing regime and the costs involved with it putting
circuses out of business? Is it threatening the livelihoods of
certain circuses in this country?
Mr Burton: Can I give you a very
clear example of a hardship my circus suffered last year? We were
due to open in Sheffield and my circus was in Twickenham. We went
to Sheffield the week before and made the necessary inspections
with the council officers and the parks officers and everything
was fine. On Monday morning the first vehicle pulled onto the
park in Sheffield and within 10 minutes I had a phone call from
the Mayor's office saying our event was cancelled. You will remember
that Sheffield had terrible floods last year and this was right
in the middle of all of that. Pre licensing what I would have
done was I would have phoned up Meadowhall shopping centre and
moved my circus from the council park to Meadowhall. It would
have required me to alter my advertising at the very last minute,
but that is my job and that is my expertise. Do not think for
one moment my expertise is putting up tents; I have other people
who do that. My expertise is in promoting an event at very, very
short notice, but I can do that and I have done it all my life.
However, because of the Licensing Act 2003 we had to turn round.
I literally had lorries coming off the motorway onto the slip
road and I told them to go back onto the motorway and back to
London. The only place we had a premises licence that we could
use was for Barnes in London. So we went all the way back to Barnes
and opened in Barnes. I have told you how I can re-advertise,
but it is one thing to re-advertise the change of location from
one part of Sheffield to another, it is another thing to advertise
a change in location from Sheffield to Barnes. That caused us
real hardship and we lost serious money that week, plus the next
venue was Perth in Scotland and the idea of Sheffield was it is
half way to Perth. I then drove from Barnes to Perth without a
break, which was another extremely expensive exercise. That was
as a direct result of the Licensing Act causing us real hardship.
I differ very slightly from Malcolm in that I do understand what
the DCMS has said to you about the Home Authority Principle. It
probably works more for ships. A ship can berth most of the time
at Southampton, although it has a licence to appear in ports around
the country. The reason the circuses are licensable is because
of guidance note 10.35 and if you are looking at the old guidance
it is 7.36. I would just like to read you a little bit. It says,
"In the case of circuses and fairgrounds, much will depend
on the content of any entertainment presented. For example, at
fairgrounds, a good deal of the musical entertainment may be incidental
... However, in the case of a circus, music and dancing are likely
to be main attractions themselves [...] " I have said to
you that we have consistently proven that music and dance are
not the main attractions but incidental. I suggest to the Committee
that although the Home Authority Principle would work for us,
the simplest, cheapest, easiest way for this Government to help
the circuses would be to change the guidance notes to say, "In
the case of circuses and fairgrounds, much will depend on the
content. For example, at fairgrounds and circuses, a good deal
of the musical entertainment may be incidental [...] " It
is a simple piece of rewording. That rewording gives you other
safeguards as well. There is clearly a point at which some circuses
may become so production heavy that they do become a theatrical
production. We all know Barnum, for example. The individual licensing
officer would then be able to make a decision as to whether or
not a circus had actually gone over the edge of being a traditional
touring circus like mine and become a theatrical production or
whether it was still that.
Q162 Mr Evans: That is the difference
between your circus and the Cirque du Soleil where the music is
very important there.
Mr Burton: I would rather use
the example of the circus musical Barnum, which is a theatrical
production, but clearly there is a sliding scale and somebody
needs to make a judgement. The DCMS will be in very tricky waters
if it ever tried to define a circus. There are dragons. I warn
you, do not go there! To leave it to somebody's individual discretion
and where people can sit down and argue it out clearly works in
practice because I am doing it now, and you can change it just
by changing the guidance notes and it is very cheap.
Mr Clay: I think you were concerned
about the actual cost of the licence application. It does create
a strain and I think circuses have been resilient and they cut
a bit here and there. You are a businessman. There is a limit
as to just how much you can keep cutting. Against that we have
got to balance the fact that circuses are one of the few commercial
live entertainments that spread right across the country. The
circus industry is touring from the very south-west right up to
the north of Scotland, which I know is a different regulation,
but they are going to a lot of small towns where there is no permanent
commercial live entertainment source. For a lot of children their
first experiences of live entertainment are circuses and pantomime
and it is the circus that goes to them; the children you have
to take to the pantomime. If you look at the smallest members
of my Association, say Lawson's circus which is based in Kent
and which plays two places every week and just sticks to the large
villages and the small towns and he goes back to those same places
frequently because he has his reputation, it is a part of the
culture, it is something which annually the people look forward
to there, but he has problems, he has lost places this year because
of the rain. He loses sites because they are now being used for
something else. So the cost of the licence is a problem, but it
is the loss of trading which is a greater problem in that if you
have a circus which may well have expenses of £20,000 a week
or more and you are stuck in a car park for a week because you
cannot trade, that is an awful lot of expense to pull back over
the rest of the season. I listened to what Martin said about this
Home Office licence, which I think may well be the compromise,
but I am certainly attracted to a very clear indication from DCMS
as to whether a circus is licensable or not. On the wording which
we should be looking at from the DCMS, a circus would not normally
be a licensable activity and then if it does go over the edge
because it is a large production show, which we tend not to see
touring in tents, then fine, it brings it into the regime. It
is this very nebulous advice from the DCMS at present while the
music may be incidental or it may not be incidental. Part of the
advice that we had originally was that a lion trainer (not that
we have lion trainers) or a high wire walker would not make the
circus licensable but that clowns would make the circus licensable
because a clown act basically is a mini drama. It is very difficult
to run a business based on those sort of interpretations.
Q163 Chairman: Finally, you have
suggested that it might be different in Scotland at the moment
and that the regime is easier in Scotland. Does that represent
a potential way forward?
Mr Clay: Scotland has had a form
of licensing under the Scotland Local Government Act 1983 where
there is a licensing regime but it is focussed very firmly on
health and safety and producing layout plans and producing engineers'
reports on the stability of seating. It does not license the entertainment,
it licenses the equipment that you are taking onto site. There
is a decided case where one of the Scottish local authorities
tried to restrict the programme content and it went to the Court
of Sessions in Edinburgh and the circus was successful and the
judge held that Scottish licensing is not a form of restriction
or censorship of the circus performance, it is based on engineering
requirements.
Chairman: I think that is it. Thank you
very much.
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