Claim: complaints went up
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: They made two claims. First, they said that there were 5,070 complaints between April 2021 and May 2023.
They also said that, looking at the months April to December, there were more complaints post-licence as pre-licence.
These are the MAIN arguments for increasing restrictions in 2024.
Here’s the chart in the council’s 2023 report, showing that increase:

Fault 1: That chart is wrong.
The real data shows that in fact there were 77% more complaints in 2019 than the council’s chart shows.
Once you plot the REAL data onto that chart, you can see that in fact there were FEWER complaints in 2022 than there were in 2019!

Fault 2: The council is cherry picking data, ignoring 2018 and ignoring January to March, without explaining why. They are also ignoring 2023, presumably because at the time of the report, they didn’t have data for the entire year.
However, we can still look at average-complaints-per-month, even for 2023. So, we changed the below chart to:
- Replace 2017 with 2018
- Include January to March
- Include 2023 data
- Show “average complaints per month”
- Show the pre-covid average (183 per month)
If we do all that, you can clearly see that complaints have gone down BELOW pre-covid levels:

Breaking that down further, we also see there was a consecutive four-season decline in complaints, and a clear trend of decreasing complaints:

Why didn’t the council mention this positive trend?
Fault 3: On page 17, the council admits that:
1. Renewed hope in the complaints system meant more people were likely to complain
2. A streamlined complaints system meant a higher % of people would submit complaints
3. “the return of…noise [after lockdowns ended] could have given rise to additional complaints”.
Obviously, we shouldn’t have had to wait 12 pages to find out the above context. But, the council missed three more reasons that complaints might have gone up:
4. Post-covid, more people were working from home, right next to busking pitches.
5. Covid safety rules stated businesses now had to keep their windows open
6. The complaints system was advertised by WCC, meaning more people knew it existed.
The above assumptions were confirmed in the data the council produced in response to FOI request (ref: 33154273), showing that noise complaints of all kinds in Westminster had gone up in 2021.
Here’s a chart comparing the noise complaints against buskers versus general noise complaints, in the financial years 2017 to 2023, when compared with 2018 levels:

Fault 4: It seems like this report got the real number of complaints entirely wrong!
The report says they received a total of 5,070 complaints between April 2021 and May 2023. However, in response to a later FOI request (ref: 33154270), WCC said that they’d only received 2,418 complaints over this period.
That’s fewer than half the complaints claimed in the report. Absolutely nuts!
Claim: It would take 403 hours to redact complaints data — so this couldn’t be provided.
Source: FOI Request (ref: 33154270)
What the council said: Between April 2021 and May 2023 they received 2418 busking-related complaints. However, they refused to provide redacted complaints data for two reasons:
1. They do not have reporting function that can easily extract the [complaints] information.
2. They estimate it will take an officer approximately 10 minutes to review each record and extract the information
At that rate, it would take 403 hours to provide complaints data. Therefore, they can’t provide the data requested.
Instead, they provided a spreadsheet that had ALL information removed, making it essentially useless:

Fault 1: They provided the 2017 to 2019 redacted complaints data, so they obviously DO have a way of exporting their complaints.

Fault 2: the last time they redacted complaints data, they sent us 3,990 complaints — that’s way more than the 2,418 complaints they’re now refusing to send.
Fault 3: It obviously doesn’t take 10 minutes to redact a complaint in a spreadsheet. You would hope that they would be able to redact multiple complaints per minute — all they’re doing is deleting door numbers, business names and human names. Easy.
Claim: Leicester Square and Covent Garden were the worst areas
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: The 2023 report mentions Leicester Square (LS) 117 times, Covent Garden (CG) 39 times, and Trafalgar Square (TS) 23 times. Covent Garden is repeatedly called a problem hotspot:

Fault: The council said they couldn’t provide redacted complaints data, so we have no way of checking whether this claim is true.
HOWEVER, we can look at 2017-2019 data. And that data set paints a completely different story.
Here is a graph showing the number of complaints that the most-complained areas received between 2017-2019.
It clearly shows that Covent Garden is one of the absolute best part of town:

There are only two ways that the complaints could be so much worse in CG, LS and TS.
Either, there was a massive reduction in complaints across the rest of the borough (in which case, they would have noticed complaints had gone down in general)…
…OR complaints went up massively in those beloved busking hotspots, in order to make that graph look like this:

Does anyone think that this is likely? If not, why are they picking on these three areas more than any others?
Here’s what those three places have in common:
1. They are pedestrianised plazas with internationally famous busking scenes. However, this would appear to work in their favour.
2. They have some of the most profitable pitches in London
3. They are worked by members of the two Street Performers Associations (the Covent Garden SPA and the Leicester Square SPA).
If the government isn’t picking on those locations because of noise complaints, which of the above three options is causing them to focus their attentions there?
Claim: that the buskers are generating too many complaints
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: The premise is that the buskers are creating too many complaints, so something has to be done.
Fault: The council is operating without targets, so their claim is essentially meaningless.
The buskers in Westminster reach over half a million people every day. They received an average of 5.2 complaints per day, which means they entertain roughly 112,000 people per complaint.
By contrast, the BBC entertains roughly 45,000 people per complaint.
The point is: the number of complaints might look bad, but it’s frankly astonishing how few complaints the buskers get.
Claim: Self Regulation in Covent Garden hasn’t worked
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: “Self-regulation [in Covent Garden] had been considered previously, but issues with obstruction and noise persisted”. This language repeats what was said in the council’s 2020 report, that “Complaints however continue to arise even here”
Fault 1: This is an unbelievable distortion of the facts: there are very, very few complaints about buskers performing on Covent Garden pitches.
Not all complaints have identifying data, but the best estimate is that there were only 34 complaints across the two pitches run by the Covent Garden SPA.

That means they received one complaint for every 730 fully-amplified shows on those pitches.
Or to put it another way: the Covent Garden busking pitches have by far the lowest number of complaints per show in any location in the borough.
The CGSPA is far, far better at reducing complaints than any measure by the council. To call CG a complaints hotspot or a problem error is an outright lie.
Fault 2: the data shows complaints have gone down.
In response to a Freedom of Information request (ref: 25236101), we received data implying that there were just 6 complaints on Covent Garden pitches in the first year (April 2021 to March 2022).
That means CG complaints were down 64%, when overall complaints about buskers in Westminster were apparently going up.
Claim: the licence is “light-touch”
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: The licence is a “light touch” response to noise complaints. This claim is repeated several times.
Fault: It is not. The license:
1. bans travelling street performers from busking in London
2. bans 80% of Covent Garden’s shows, by banning so called “dangerous” props
3. Makes it a crime to busk in 99.999% of the borough (207 square metres of buskable space in a borough of 21.4 million square meters)
Here’s a visualisation of the proportion of land on which it is legal to busk:

The licence also does all of the below…
Claim: buskers can use amplification on 5 pitches
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: There are five pitches on which buskers can use amplification.
Fault 1: While technically true, two of the five amplified pitches are terrible: one in Marble Arch that’s so low-earning that it’s unusable; and one in the middle of a traffic island that is so dangerous the council says if a crowd starts to form the busker has to stop. Crazy.

There’s also a third pitch, the world-famous one in Covent Garden, used by the circus/comedy acts. It hasn’t been used by musicians for forty years. The Covent Garden buskers refused to get a licence, and their pitch was left alone.
Fault 2: Far too many licences were given out for how much amplified space remained.
There were just two usable pitches that musicians could use with amplification, one in Leicester Square, and one in Trafalgar Square.
Unfortunately, those pitches are closed the whole time. Here’s how many times they were closed between 2017 and 2019:

Those closures are far more likely on weekends and holidays — the most popular busking times of the year.
As a result, on average there was just 15 hours of amplified pitch space that could be used every day.
However, the council gave out an average of 429 licences per year, between 2021-2023.
This means that ONLY the buskers who received licences would get an amplified pitch for an average of 2 minutes per day, or a 45-minute show once every three weeks.
Put simply: the Westminster Licensing Scheme was so heavy-handed it had no chance of succeeding.
Claim: buskers are tax-dodging criminals who think they’re above the law.
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: Buskers aren’t getting a licence because: they wish to avoid scrutiny from HMRC; or they have unspent criminal convictions; or they simply don’t think a licence should apply to them.
Fault: There would be no point in getting a licence if the terms of the licence prevented you from doing your show.
Here are all the other reasons there was no point in getting a licence:
1. It banned international acts
2. It banned 80% of CG shows (no ‘dangerous’ props)
3. It provided buskers with one amplified show every three weeks
4. They are part of an association that already eliminates noise complaints
5. They won’t join up with any program that calls them tax-cheating criminals.
Claim: the licence’s 85% turnover rate is ‘normal’ for the industry
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: The fact that 85% of buskers refuse to renew their licence is normal for the industry, due to seasonal trends and the transient nature of busking.
Fault: A representative from Busk in London told me that their turnover rate was closer to 22%, and most buskers stick with them for years.
Maybe buskers aren’t renewing their Westminster busking licence because there’s absolutely no point in having one.
Claim: the Licensing regime was supposed to be “self regulating”
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: The licence was intended to be “self-regulating”, and, as such, self-regulation has been shown not to work.
Fault 1: All of the so-called ‘voluntary’ conditions weren’t at all voluntary.
The licence divided things into “licence conditions” and a “voluntary code of conduct” (CoC). However, the first 11 items in the CoC were made illegal under the terms of the licence. They weren’t voluntary at all.
As for the remaining 5 items, two of them were pointless, as the redacted complaints data from 2017-2019 showed nobody ever complained about them.
The third one said that buskers should “use the forum” — which the council itself cancelled.
The fourth one said buskers should only perform for 40 minutes, with a 20 minute break in between. The buskers protested this item so much that the council agreed to remove it from the licence conditions. Including it here still is ridiculous.
Which leaves just the fifth one: having a wide repertoire of music.

Fault 2: The report repeatedly says that they asked the police to intervene, and the police refused to do so.
Does that sound like a ‘self regulating’ licence, or does it simply sound like something that the cops have no respect or time to care about?
Just to be clear: the council says (without supplying data, information or evidence) that buskers have physically threatened council officials when they’ve been asked to move on, and still the cops refused to intervene.
Yeah, I don’t believe it either. But that’s what the report claimed.
Claim: the buskers are ‘illegal’
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: the report uses the phrase “illegal busker/illegal busking” 39 times, to describe buskers who are performing without a licence.

Fault 1: The council is either breaking Union Discrimination laws, or GDPR laws, or both.
When buskers apply for a licence, they are asked about their union status.
If they’re acting on that information, they’re breaking union discrimination laws.
If they’re not acting on it, there’s no reason for them to have or keep that information, which means they’re contravening the Data Protection Act.

Fault 2: The council is illegally avoiding paying a PRS (Performing Rights Society) licence.
PRS has a licence tariff that councils pay for, which covers busking. Buskers performing on council-run pitches can then submit their original playlist to PRS, and PRS will pay them £1.47.
In other words, the council pays PRS, and PRS pays the busker.
By refusing to pay for the £10.93 day rate for a busking pitch x 26 pitches x 365 days means the council is illegally avoiding paying £103,726 per year in licence fees.
This seems on paper to be a little worse than a busker not paying for a licence that makes their show illegal.
Update: In 2022 that price went up to £11.82, meaning WCC is now illegally avoiding paying £112,172 in licence fees per year.
Claim: WCC’s recommendations for changing the licence would make the slightest bit of difference
Source: 2023 report
What the council said: There are 17 recommendations at the end of the report, which its authors claim will help.
Fault 1: One of the main reasons why the report’s authors say the licence failed is because the cops refused to act and the council’s enforcement team are too thinly stretched.
They also admit that: “it will be crucial to manage the expectations surrounding the Council’s ability to address…issues related to busking”, and that they have “other priorities and existing resources”, and that the “Police’s limited resources will be a key factor in whether the scheme can be enforced effectively.”
A few stats: WCC has a crime rate 260% higher than the national average, and the Metropolitan Police has admitted they don’t have the resources to prosecute low-level crimes like shoplifting.
Nowhere is it suggested in the report why the council’s priorities might change.
Fault 2: They recommend that if a busker’s friend is being “investigated”, and they refuse to give that friend’s name, they’ll lose their licence.
In other words, buskers will lose their licence if they don’t rat on their friends.
Fault 3: They recommend that if street performer associations want to be “recognised”, they must only represent licensed buskers.
Thought experiment. Say an SPA agrees to this clause. Then, at some point, the council decides it doesn’t like the leader of that SPA, and refuses to renew their licence.
Does that leader then have to quit the SPA? If they don’t quit, does the SPA stop being recognised?
In other words, should the council really have the power to decide who sits opposite them in negotiations?
Nuts.
Fault 4: They recommend that if buskers use offensive language towards council officials, they should lose their licence.
Two problems here. The first is that they don’t define offensive, so this is unenforceable.
The second is that the House of Lords voted to say that people have the right to swear at the cops.
It seems the House of Lords is more anti-establishment than whomever drafted this report.
Fault 5: They recommend that the current SPAs should either change the way they work, or be banned from joining the Forum.
The Forum is supposed to be where the community comes together and talk, something that was previously described as “important” and “vital” in previous council reports.
Now, they want to ban the only organisations that actually represent buskers in the borough from attending.
Fault 6: They recommend increasing the licence fee, to pay for “addressing persistent noncompliant and illegal buskers.”
But, they say several times that buskers who get the licence behave themselves. It’s only the unlicensed buskers who break the rules.
So, the council is proposing erecting a financial barrier to getting a licence…in order to pay for enforcement against buskers who don’t have licences.
They’re also proposing charging the good buskers for the actions of the bad buskers, i.e. collective punishment.
Fault 7: They recommend removing amplification from Leicester Square, leaving only the amplified pitch in Trafalgar Square.
If they did this, each licensed busker would get a show once every 42 days — that’s once every month and a half.
Would it even be legal to sell such a licence?
Claim: The council has a clue
Fault: they do not.