Here are Westminster’s recommendations for how to ‘fix’ their unworkable busking policy.
They admit their policy is broken. They also admit the policy will ONLY be fixed if:
1. They repair community relationships, and get the buskers on board
2. The police decide to stop completely ignoring this waste of everyone’s time
I want you to remember these two things as you scroll through the recommendations below.
Will they work?
Recommendation: buskers under 14 should be banned
Flaw: Busking is already against the law for under-14-year-olds. It’s national law. This is a pointless addition.
Recommendation: 14 to 17 year old buskers should be accompanied
Flaw: No evidence is given that a need for this exists.
Recommendation: buskers under 18 should be banned from performing both during and after school.
Flaw 1: No evidence given that a need for this exists.
Flaw 2: Other truancy laws only involve what children can do during school hours.
Flaw 3: They couldn’t even busk if accompanied by an adult, meaning WCC thinks it knows better than parents on what’s good for their kids after school.
Flaw 4: The kids would be only be banned from busking on weekdays during term time. However, weekends and holidays are the most common times for amplified pitches (in Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square) to be closed for events.
Flaw 5: Forcing children to prioritise busking on weekends and holidays is bad for professional buskers as well, as it increases demand for the high-value pitches.
Flaw 6: This law suggests that although a 17 year old can legally start an apprenticeship at a music studio, they wouldn’t be able to busk during term time at schools they no longer go to.
Recommendation: kids shouldn’t be able to busk after 8 p.m.
Explanation: Westminster is too dangerous for them after 8 p.m.
Flaw 1: No evidence is given that this is needed.
Flaw 2: Already WCC is proposing reducing the number of days 14-to-17 year olds can busk on by 52%. Taking off the last hour of the day reduces it by a further 9% — without providing any evidence that WCC is, indeed, a danger to minors, even if accompanied by an adult.
Recommendation: buskers are responsible for ‘safeguarding children and vulnerable adults’.
Explanation: If a busker sees a kid in their audience who looks at risk, they must intervene.
Flaw 1: They provided no evidence of a need for this. Has a busker ever not reported a child they knew to be ‘at risk’ to the authorities?
Flaw 2: it doesn’t explain what ‘at risk’ is.
Flaw 3: It doesn’t explain what ‘intervene’ means.
If it means buskers have to stop their show and report the child to the authorities, how likely is it that the child will stick around to wait for the authorities show up?
If it means physically doing something, it’s making untrained individuals (buskers) to do the job of council social services. This is a terrible idea.
Flaw 4: It doesn’t explain what will happen if a busker doesn’t intervene. It also doesn’t say how the council would be able to tell that a busker knowingly didn’t intervene. Would the council even be able to produce evidence that they knew a kid was at risk and did nothing?
Recommendation: it’s up to buskers to pay for a PRS music royalties licence
Explanation: The council doesn’t believe it should have to pay for the PRS busking tariff, so it’s up to buskers to get it.
Flaw: PRS has a Local Authority “busking” tariff, which is specifically set up for councils that have busking pitches.
If a council has a busking pitch, they pay the tariff, so that the buskers don’t have to. In fact, PRS will even pay buskers who perform original works on council-mandated busking pitches.
So, what makes a pitch? Well, WCC’s pitches:
a) are clearly demarcated
b) are the only places where busking is allowed
c) can only be used by licensed buskers
d) have set rules over what shows are allowed
e) are patrolled and managed by council officers
What, exactly, does the council believe is missing? What would they have to add in order to qualify for the Local Authorities busking tariff?
Recommendation: make it clear buskers who lie on application forms won’t get a licence
Flaw: They provided no evidence of a need for this.
Recommendation: buskers who use offensive language towards city officials will lose their licence.
Flaw 1: They don’t define ‘offensive’. Does this mean swear words? Blasphemy? Calling the council official a ‘jumped up busybody’?
Flaw 2: The council claims that only unlicensed buskers have verbally abused officers. The threat of losing a licence is therefore targeting the wrong people.
Flaw 3: The House of Lords voted to say that Brits have the right to verbally abuse the police. Apparently, the House of Lords is more anti-establishment than whomever wrote this recommendation.
Recommendation: Buskers who don’t rat on their friends should have their licence revoked
Explanation: if busker Jill is being investigated for a licence infraction, and busker Jane refuses to give up Jill’s name, then Jane’s licence will be revoked.
Flaw: Not even the cops can legally force someone to rat on their friends.
Recommendation: amplification should be removed from Leicester Square
Explanation: there are too many noise complaints about buskers in Leicester Square
Flaw 1: the council has not set targets for the number of complaints they’d find acceptable.
The buskers entertain tens of millions of people in Leicester Square every year.
The buskers are the number one reason to visit Leicester Square, according to TripAdvisor and Google Map reviews.
In return for all this, they receive just 113 complaints per year. How many is too many?
Flaw 2: Bizarrely, the council can’t even trust its own complaints data. In reports it says they received over 5,000 busking complaints in total in a two year period. But, in a Freedom of Information response they said they received under 2,500 over that time.
Flaw 3: the council admits that the majority of complaints come from a handful of complainants
Flaw 4: the only ‘impact report’ the council republished in their 2023 review was of a local corporation complaining they couldn’t have meetings facing the square with their windows open.
An office in one of the busiest parts of town, complaining about a noise that dates back at least as far as the 1850s — when all they need to do is close a window.
Are all complaints created equal?
Flaw 5: There are only two amplified pitches that are usable within the licence. Eliminating amplification in Leicester Square will leave hundreds of buskers with just one amplified pitch to share between them in Trafalgar Square.
Recommendation: only ‘recognise’ SPAs that limit membership to licensed buskers
Explanation: Street Performer Associations (SPAs) allowed to join ‘Forum’ meetings, or promoted by the council, will have to only admit licensed buskers.
Flaw: The council is saying that if a recognised SPA is being led by Busker Jill, and the council decides to revoke Jill’s busking license, then either: a) the SPA has to immediately excommunicate Jill, or b) the SPA will no longer be recognised.
Essentially the council is saying they should have the right to determine who sits opposite them in negotiations.
Recommendation: the council can determine how ‘recognised’ SPAs are governed
Explanation: The council can provide templates of governing documents that SPAs have to use, in order to be ‘recognised’ by the council.
Flaw 1: If the council wants to create an organisation that adheres to the council’s strict rules, then the council should create a new department. This is just a blatant attempt to get buskers to work for the council for free. This is not “self regulation”, this is just blatant exploitation.
Flaw 2: The council is proposing excluding the only two associations of street performers in London: the only people in town!
This is going to be awful for communication going forward.
Recommendation: buskers should be bribed to usurp the current SPAs
Explanation: if any buskers decide to start an SPA that a) only admits licensed buskers, and b) ‘trains’ its members, they can use extra-special pitches, or use amplification on pitches where it’s otherwise banned.
Flaw 1: They aren’t proposing paying the buskers to run these training workshops. This is exploitation.
Flaw 2: WCC is admitting now that amplification doesn’t need to be banned on those pitches.
Recommendation: stop residents, businesses and the current SPAs from attending the community forum.
Flaw 1: What?
Flaw 2: The ‘Forum’ was supposed to be a place where the community—everyone, including residents and businesses—comes together to work through problems.
Now the council is saying it should only be for licensed buskers and the council.
Flaw 3: The ‘Forum’ was supposed to be taking place since 2021. The council scrapped it after a single meeting, and never gave an explanation why.
Unless the council has shown that the forums don’t work, they haven’t provided any evidence that a change is needed.
Will this ‘fix’ the licence?
Currently, 85% of buskers don’t renew their licence. The licence bans all touring buskers and 3/4 of the shows in Covent Garden. It provides buskers with an average of 1 amplified show every 3 weeks. The police are completely ignoring it.
Do the above recommendations give you the impression that this will change?