Bass Camp and
Whatever The Weather are sad to report that we have been forced to cancel the May 8th show featuring The Heartless Crew and Ruckspin due to licensing issues.
Recent legislation requires city centre nightclubs to submit a 20 page risk assessment document to the local police 28 days prior to every single event they plan to host. The reality is that the vast majority of venues do not do this because it’s so incredibly time consuming; a venue such as Moho puts on around 5 events per week, necessitating an extra 100 pages of work to get through. Moho Live were previously unaware of this legal obligation.
If the venue does not fill in one of these forms and get permission to proceed, the police have the power to shut you down if they have any concerns about the event. Greater Manchester Police decided that the presence of The Heartless Crew presented a risk to the public.
For us, this seems pretty ludicrous because we’ve never had problems at any of our events, nor Moho at their venue. Security of attendees is our main priority (alongside tight sound and heavy line-ups). The Heartless Crew perform around the UK and Europe week-in-week-out without any trouble.
These new laws and procedures, put in place to govern events, just mean that the police can basically control what goes on in the City Centre. If you have huge budgets to pay for private policing, you can do what you want, otherwise, you run the risk of getting shut down, even when you have a perfect safety track record.
The new laws and procedures give the police far more power than they should have and are designed to reduce policing costs and generate more income from additional private policing. The further down this road we go the harder it becomes to organise an event, which ultimately leads to less diversity, less competition, increased monopoly power and diminished freedoms.
This is the second time we’ve had an event pulled by the police in under 6 months and it’s pretty darn frustrating as May 8th was set to be a great show having sold more advanced tickets than at any of our other shows in 2009.
To those involved in the organisation, those that planned to come and to all artists involved we offer our sincere apologies.
Refunds can be obtained direct from ticket outlets who have now been informed of the cancellation.
Yours regretfully,
Ken
Bass Camp recommends:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= ... 6708891163
featuring Ruckspin and myself.
