The UK's 2nd-largest city wants to ban busking

Hey everyone,

Birmingham is planning on passing a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) that would ban busking in much of the city centre. (For international readers, Manchester may be famous for its football and Liverpool for its music, but in fact the less-known Birmingham is the UK's second largest city.)

Birmingham declared bankruptcy in 2023, leading to potentially unnecessary cuts to children’s services, adult social care, homelessness prevention and youth services, plus the sale of assets for hundreds of millions of pounds below market value. In June 2024, the council ended all funding to its local arts institutions.

In a world where the council can't afford to support the arts, you might think they'd appreciate the presence of their local street performers, enlivening the spirit of the city without charging for their services. But, in April this year, Birmingham started a public consultation about the aforementioned PSPO.

The Musicians' Union responded by calling the plans "draconian" in nature, and "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut". Equity, the UK's performing arts trade union, called it a "massive overreach" that risked "hollowing out even more the already shrinking arts offer in the city and diminishing the street-level arts experience of residents, workers and visitors."

That's great of them, but neither organisation, nor the many publications that reported this news, mentioned that the council wasn't just creating a shitty law, they were also misusing their powers.

The text of the government guidance for PSPOs says cities should "seek early contact with interest groups...such as buskers or other street entertainers". I can find no indication they did this at all. Furthermore, the Home Office guidance on the use of PSPOs, when they were first created, said they “should not be used to prevent busking...unless there is serious and genuine antisocial behaviour”. And a member of the House of Lords said, in parliament, that:

Birmingham is banning all busking, not just policing anti-social buskers, in direct opposition to how the British government says PSPOs are supposed to be used.

So, on May 27th I submitted the following Freedom of Information request:

REQUEST:

I have several questions pertaining to the PSPO recommended about street performance in Birmingham.

Please answer these questions separately, and number your answers to correspond with each question below.

If any one question would take too long to answer, please state that, but answer the other questions.

1. The "Public Spaces Protection Orders Guidance for councils" recommends speaking to street performers "before the formal statutory consultation takes place". In which ways did Birmingham Council make early contact with local street performers before April 14th 2025, to let them know about the upcoming consultation period, or to discuss the terms of the planned PSPO?

2. The PSPO is in relation to "street-based activities such as busking, street preaching and street entertaining". What proportion of the complaints, expressed as a percentage, were in relation to street performers, or street preaching, or other activities? Please break down the proportion for each of those three separate groups for 2023 and 2024.

3. The government says that noise complaints have been significantly increasing. Please provide the total number of complaints about busking/street entertaining over the past decade, broken down by year, excluding complaints for non-busking activity (such as street preaching).

4. I am not asking you to do new work to answer this question. Does the council ALREADY have an estimate for the proportion of buskers who are performing in an anti-social manner? If so, please provide that number.

5. Again, I'm not asking the council to do new work here. Does the council ALREADY know what proportion of the complaints have been in reference to amplified acts, and b) unamplified musicians? If so, please provide that number.

6. The council said "between 18th April 2024 and 8th July 2024 businesses were asked to keep a diary of incidents where noise from street-based activities such as busking, street preaching has a detrimental impact on the operation of their business". Please provide the guidance the council gave those businesses, when asking them to keep a diary.

7. What proportion of the incidents received were simply that the business employees could HEAR a busker VS the proportion that were detrimental to the operation of their businesses? What proportion estimated that the buskers were performing at over 85db?

8. In which ways, between 18th April 2024 and 8th July 2024 did Birmingham attempt to receive positive feedback about the buskers who performed in the city?

9. Does the council know what proportion of the complaints came from businesses with open doors and windows? If so, please provide that number.

If Birmingham is anything like Westminster, I should expect to get a response in about 6-8 months 🙃

Every week I send out a bunch of stories I'm not featuring elsewhere: all the (English language) news from the world of busking in one place.

I mentioned in a previous email that the Lawrence Busker Festival took place on May 23-25th this year. But, I've just seen a news report saying that Richard Renner, the festival director, had just 3 minutes to grab his dog and get out of the house as it burned down around him, a house that he's rebuilding now:

In better news, Brainerd City in Mississippi unanimously voted down an ordinance to regulate busking. Quotes from the council meeting are both funny and uplifting:

That above clip is from Paul McCartney's real (but staged) busking at Leicester Square tube station in London in 1984, for the movie Give My Regards To Broad Street.

Cesc Sansalvadó, an up-and-coming Catalonian singer, attributed his success to busking, saying, "Singing in the street makes you sing good because if not, you cannot sing five times per week, two hours per day without harming your voice."

Ed Sheeran, who used to busk in Galway, and DJ AG did an outdoor performance in support of TRACKS, which helps young people break into the music industry. This led me down a rabbit hole where I discovered the Ed Sheeran Foundation (which I promptly applied for funding with), and that he launched PA system called "The Busker".