The following from Hamish Birchall http://www.livemusicforum.co.uk/


Under pressure from campaigners and the music industry, the Met Police 
yesterday announced changes to their controversial gig risk assessment Form 
696.

One of the main criticisms has been that the Form was implicitly racist in 
asking questions about the target audience and genres of music.

See national media coverage:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-revise-racist-events-risk-form-1783179.html

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23740885-details/Met+forced+into+music+form+change+over+racist+claim/article.do

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8242165.stm

But the Met's changes seem to be largely cosmetic, and were immediately 
criticised by Feargal Sharkey, boss of UK Music.  Interviewed outside 
Scotland Yard by 'Listen Up!', the pub industry campaign for new Licensing 
Act exemptions for small gigs, he said:

'... the form quite clearly encompasses live music and still quite clearly 
targets musicians and performers... I still question, against a background 
where there were 174,000 violent crimes against the person last year, how 
many of those were perpetrated by any singer, bass player, guitar player, 
saxophone player, or violinist?  ... we have a government, a Parliamentary 
select committee calling for this form to be scrapped, government ministers 
acknowledging at the weekend that this form is wrong [a reference to 
comments by David Lammy MP], and indeed the chairman of the Local Government 
Association culture committee [Chris White].  Yet again the Metropolitan 
Police have completely misread the position on this...'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcQz7i4YIKQ

The petition to scrap Form 696 currently has over 17,800 signatures and is 
8th in the list of over 4,500 petitions on the Number 10 website: 
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Scrapthe696/

The petition calling on the prime minister to implement exemptions for small 
gigs recommended by the Parliamentary Culture Committee has over 9,100 
signatures and is 15th in the same petition list:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/livemusicevents/

If the small gigs exemptions were implemented, Form 696 could not be imposed 
on performances of live music where the exemptions applied. However, it 
could still be enforced where the playing of recorded music and dancing took 
place (both are potentially licensable activities under the Licensing Act 
2003).

ENDS