Hospitality fails to know its place - Ed’s letter

Fans of classic children’s books will be very much aware of The Magic Faraway Tree, in which a series of worlds rotate above a tree, allowing bored children to climb into a whole set of new experiences when they should probably have been raking leaves or washing the car.

It’s not all great - of course - and some of the worlds are ill suited to the children or indeed the wider world and everyone is eager to move on. So it is at Westminster City Council, which has a long tradition of not being well matched with the area in which it operates and should maybe be punted on to, say, the Cotswolds.

The council has developed a reputation for opposing the hospitality sector, serving instead the four residents who moved to Soho to get an early night and an uninterrupted 12 hours of shuteye. Issues over closing times, bins, people speaking after 7pm have all formed chapters of the big book of Westminster City Council war stories.

It its new draft licensing policy, the council is encouraging more venues to offer fixed seating formats in a bid to reduce “vertical drinkers” advising applicants that “greater weight” will be given to proposals that “demonstrate meaningful reductions in actual operating capacity”.

The council says that it wants to “discourage excessive drunkenness and encourage the provision of more seating in premises that serve alcohol for people to sit and enjoy a drink and order food by table service in place of open bar space that caters for high volume vertical drinking”.

And of course, we all want to discourage excessive drunkenness. That’s why bar staff are already prevented from serving the excessively drunk.

The plans were met with the predictable objections from the hospitality sector, which is not really looking to make “meaningful reductions in actual operating capacity”. They were echoed by No. 10, which said: “Busy pubs full of people talking to each other is not a public nuisance, it is British life and it is thousands of jobs.

“The government is devolving new licensing powers to the Mayor to help support pubs and nightlife. Soho did not become world famous by taking last orders early, switching the lights off at 10 o’clock.”

The issue speaks to the wider problem of how the different sectors of hospitality are perceived. We are back in the days of the first world war, when licensing hours were introduced to limit alcohol consumption among working-class munitions workers. And to be fair, being drunk around bombs is best avoided.

As the World Cup recently illustrated, people are desperate for those monoculture events, where we all gather and enjoy a bit of community. That is achieved not just by sitting down nicely and having a meal, but all crowding in for some chats. Hospitality means a welcome for all sorts, much like London itself, something which Westminster City Council is being reminded.