A decision to impose a fee on venues offering space to performing artists has quickly snowballed across social meida, throwing Glasgow Council's licensing policy into the spotlight. Specialist Stephen McGowan of Lindsays casts an expert eye over the furore.

Over the last several days social media platforms have been awash with anti-Glasgow City Council vitriol and opprobrium, as a result of the publication of the Council’s guidance note on changes to public entertainment licensing which, in short, would for the first time require free-to-attend art events like exhibitions to be licensed. The matter has now made the mainstream press with some coverage in The Herald of 14 February 2012.

The artistic community began to wake up to this proposal a few days ago and it was over the weekend that the opposition gathered pace on Twitter and Facebook, with many decrying the Council for introducing a “tax on arts” and that the new licensing requirement, and corollary fees, would kill off Glasgow’s vibrant grass roots arts scene.

I followed the calls for a petition and general dissent with interest. A great number of contributors vented feelings which, whilst uninformed, may in fact have helped matters, as the petition snowballed and ultimately local Glasgow councillors and even Nicola Sturgeon became involved.

Public entertainment licensing is regulated in Scotland by the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 and the general precept is that a licence is required for the use of a premises as a place of public entertainment. There are some general exceptions to this, such as where the premises is licensed under another regime, such as the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005. Until recently, the licence requirement did not “kick in” unless members of the public who wished to avail themselves of the entertainment were required to pay for the privilege.

In 2004 a Task Group sought about reviewing the provisions of the 1982 Act with a view to “updating” the legislation. This report gathered dust for some time until the SNP administration picked it up as part of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010. The 2010 Act made several very important changes to alcohol licensing, but also a number of changes to civic licensing which included removing the requirement for public entertainment licensing to be based on “paid for” events.

The licensing of public entertainment is an “optional” civic licence. This means it is a matter for each licensing authority to decide whether or not public entertainment events should require a licence, and secondly to decide what forms of entertainment are treated as “entertainment” for licensing purposes. Any licence application attracts a fee, and for short term events the 1982 Act creates a provision for temporary licences.

The artistic community in Glasgow were incensed when this change was announced by Glasgow City Council, who had elected to try and publicise the change in advance of the key date of 1 April 2012, when it comes into force. Clearly the artistic community had been completely unaware of this before the council issued its briefing note. Whether it is for the Scottish Government or the Council to try and highlight the change is a matter of debate, but I know from experience that Holyrood is far less inclined to alert the public or affected businesses to changes in alcohol licensing, for example the recent move to Challenge 25, in comparison to the advertisement onslaught that occurred with the smoking ban.

I should make it clear that the change requiring a licence for free events was not a creation of Glasgow City Council, it is an amendment to existing law passed by the Scottish Government. The original impetus for this was to address the issue of larger scale free events being unlicensed, and therefore out-with the ambit of the licensing authority. This, it was argued, was a bad thing because such events would not have had the necessary safety and security measures in place. At the time when this change was proposed, Glasgow City Council in fact objected and specifically said that it would unfairly target smaller events.

I think Glasgow City Council have been a little blindsided by the sheer volume and energy of the outcry against this, and they can perhaps feel some sense of injustice given their opposition to the change in the first place. As the artistic Twitterati woke up to this, a petition against the “tax on arts” snowballed and collected some high profile supporters such as Belle and Sebastien, Alex Kapranos and ultimately local councillors and MSPs.

I am no apologist for the Council, but it seems to me that the anti-council bile generated by this has been somewhat harsh. Firstly, Glasgow City Council did not want this and in fairness I doubt if any local authority had really understood the potentially devastating impact this would have on the arts scene. Secondly, once the real weight of the matter was drawn to their attention through the petition, they reacted swfitly. It was only a few days after the petition began that the Council signalled their intent to amend the licensable forms of entertainment to exclude free to attend art events. They have, it seems to me, listened to the concerns of the art community and reacted with speed.

Much of criticism levelled at the Council is to my mind misdirected considering their opposition to the change in the first place (a fact missed by many detractors); but the whole matter has also shown up some real lack of awareness on how public entertainment licensing works amongst elected officials. One local councillor put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Government, not realising that the council has local autonomy over what forms of entertainment need the licence, or indeed whether public entertainment should be licensed at all. The #glasgowartlicence and #stoptheartstax movement was, it seems to me, just a little bit hijacked by those seeking to score political points.

With the move to redefine what is meant is meant by “exhibition” in order to exclude these smaller scale events, the Glasgow arts world can claim a success here. The amendment will be done by way of a resolution which will be put to a vote by the members of the Council’s licensing and regulatory committee (for the avoidance of doubt, that committee is a separate entity to the licensing board which deals with alcohol and gambling licences). The full terms of the resolution will be known in due course and I suspect that the Glasgow art scene will not claim victory until the exact dispensation is known. From a personal point of view, I am hopeful that the dispensation will meet with their approval.

That being said, I remain worried. One of problems not acknowledged in this furore is that this is another example of the patchwork quilt that is the magical world of licensing law. This is not simply a Glaswegian issue. What about the other licensing authorities in Scotland who have elected to license public entertainment? Edinburgh city council is the most obvious example and they certainly include “exhibitions” as a form of entertainment requiring a licence yet there appears to be no backlash there. That may, perhaps, be down to the fact that Glasgow endeavoured to publicise the change with their briefing note, whilst Edinburgh (as far as I am aware) has not. I’m not sure what efforts have been made by the Glasgow scene to warn their brethren in other areas. It seems to me that there will be further petition and outcry once the rest of Scotland wakes up to this.

The irony is that it could all have been avoided if the Government had listened to Glasgow City Council – and provided for an exemption in the legislation at a national level.

Stephen McGowan is the director of licensing and gambling at Lindsays.