My Lords, up and down the country, local authorities, using powers granted by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which amended the Environmental Protection Act 1990, have been restricting leafleting for cultural events, including performances at comedy clubs, theatres, music venues, art galleries and even village halls. Under powers introduced by the 2005 Act, local authorities can designate areas within which people must buy a licence if they want to hand out leaflets. The Act gives local authorities powers to designate land on which people require a licence to distribute free printed matter, makes it an offence to distribute leaflets on this land without obtaining the consent of the local authority, and permits the local authority to refuse consent or to give or limit consent, for example with reference to the time and place of distribution or the material distributed. It requires a person distributing leaflets to produce, on demand, written evidence of the local authority’s consent, and permits authorities to charge a fee for the issuing of licences.
A survey by the Manifesto Club, the organisation that first identified the issue, found that 27% of local authorities restrict leafleting, including Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton, Swindon, Wolverhampton, Oxford, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Leeds, Derby, Doncaster, East Hertfordshire, Colchester, Basildon, North West Leicestershire, Sheffield, Rushmoor, Oldham, Kirklees, Birmingham and seven London councils. This means that leafleting restrictions cover the country’s key metropolitan centres and many smaller towns.
Licence fees are prohibitively expensive for small groups. In Basildon, a licence costs £150 for one day, £350 for a Saturday or Sunday and £800 for one week. Oldham charges £50 and Brent £55 per day. Wolverhampton charges £262 per distributor. Some boroughs, such as Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea, have a number of separate leafleting zones, each of which requires a separate licence. Hammersmith and Fulham charges £250 for each of its eight zones, so it costs £2,000 to leaflet freely throughout the borough. The Manifesto Club’s research found that these leafleting restrictions fall most heavily on grass-roots art and community events, including comedy clubs, theatres, music performances and art exhibitions. Larger-scale events have the option of more commercial advertising channels, and can afford leafleting licences if they so choose.
However, there is a paradox here. The Local Government Association, as recently as March, extolled the benefits of the contribution of the arts to local communities. Its press release stated:
“Arts investment can bring in £4 for every £1 spent ... From international festivals and museums that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors, to street entertainment revitalising high streets and theatres supporting young people to gain new skills, thriving arts create great destinations, vibrant places to live and have many valuable economic spin-offs. A theatre, museum or festival draws visitors who do not simply spend money on their ticket or entrance fee, but also buy meals in local restaurants, go to local shops, or perhaps stay in hotels as part of their visit. These people might never have visited that location without the pull of its cultural attractions. Businesses also choose to invest in places with a vibrant arts scene because they offer their employees a high quality of life”.
Quite contrary to this enlightened statement, leafleting licence rules have been catastrophic to grass-roots arts organisations, local theatres, jazz nights, comedy nights and arts shows in venues such as theatres, village halls, comedy clubs and small nightclubs, which rely on leafleting to build an audience but cannot afford the high licence fees. In Leicester, a one-off licence application fee is £103, on top of which an organisation must pay £26 per distributor per day. The Leicester Comedy Festival has 200 small comedy acts. It would cost an unaffordable £5,200 per day to allow them all to leaflet. These rules in effect mean that only the most commercial operations are able to freely leaflet in Leicester.
Oxford student societies were asked to pay £100 per month to hand out leaflets, as was the Oxford Jazz Festival. A flyer ban in Leicester Square, London, caused the collapse of several comedy nights and the reduction of many audiences from 75 to 25. A Newcastle jazz club owner said that leafleting restrictions reduced his audiences by 50%. The Sawbridgeworth Evening Women’s Institute was threatened with a fine for handing out leaflets about its annual art exhibition. It no longer leaflets for the event.
Leafleting licence schemes have had a widely recognised adverse effect on the music and arts scene in key British cities, reducing the grass-roots scene and limiting opportunities for emerging artists to win themselves an audience. Leafleting restrictions have had a severe effect on the music and experimental arts scenes in cities such as Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham and Brighton, and on the fringe comedy scene in Brighton and Leicester.
One unintended consequence of leafleting licence schemes has been the commercialisation of the leafleting of the arts scene. In Brighton, for example, the leafleting licence led to the decline of smaller, experimental music nights, and the growth of bigger mainstream club nights. Several comedy festivals, including those in Brighton and Leicester, now have a diminished number of fringe acts, because only those who can afford to take out brochure adverts or pay the leafleting fee are able to reach an audience. Perversely, the more commercial operations, which employ full-time leafleters, tend to leaflet more indiscriminately and create most litter.