A neighbourhood that sells itself on its nightlife also has thousands of residents who would like some sleep
Last Orders in Shoreditch: The Long Argument Between the Bars and the Bedrooms
At two o’clock on a Sunday morning, the corner where Shoreditch High Street meets Old Street has the atmosphere of a railway station during a strike. Crowds stand about with no clear plan. Someone is singing. Someone is crying into a phone. A man in a suit is eating chips with enormous concentration. Minicabs nose through the bodies. Forty feet above all this, behind double glazing that is not quite thick enough, a person who has to be up at six is lying awake and composing a letter to the council.
That, in a single scene, is the argument that has shaped this neighbourhood for twenty years. Shoreditch is one of the best known night-time districts in Europe. It is also somebody’s home. Getting those two facts to live together has occupied licensing officers, councillors, bar owners and residents’ groups for most of this century, and nobody would claim it has been settled.
How It Happened
In the 1990s the area was cheap, semi-industrial and largely deserted after dark. Artists moved into the warehouses. Bars and clubs followed, because there were few neighbours to disturb and the rents were low. By the early 2000s Shoreditch had become the fashionable place to go out in London, and it has stayed busy ever since.
Two things then changed. A reform of the licensing laws, which took effect in 2005, ended the old fixed closing times and allowed venues to apply for later hours. And the empty warehouses were converted into flats. The same reputation that filled the bars sold the apartments. Thousands of people moved in above and beside the venues, many paying a great deal for the privilege, and discovered what a Friday night sounds like from the inside.
The Council in the Middle
Most of the district falls within Hackney, with its eastern side in Tower Hamlets. Both councils act as licensing authorities under the national framework explained on GOV.UK. Their job is to weigh applications against four objectives set by law, among them the prevention of crime and disorder and of public nuisance.
Hackney has for many years treated Shoreditch as an area of special concern, on the ground that the sheer number of licensed premises was having a cumulative effect. In such an area, a new applicant must show that the business will not add to the problem. In 2018 the council went further and adopted a policy that set default closing times for new venues, around eleven at night in the week and midnight at weekends, with later hours to be justified case by case.
The Row
That decision caused an uproar. Venue owners, musicians and a great many younger residents argued that it would choke off new nightlife and turn a creative district into a dormitory. The council’s own consultation had found most respondents opposed. Campaigners pointed to the number of clubs and grassroots music venues that London had already lost.
The council replied that existing venues were unaffected, that later licences could still be granted to operators who made a good case, and that it had a duty to the people who lived there. It pointed to the cost of policing and cleaning the area at weekends, and to the complaints it received. Both sides had a point, which is what makes the argument so durable.
What the Residents Say
It is fashionable to mock the person who moves next to a nightclub and then complains about the noise, and I have done my share. But the complaints lodged with the councils are mostly not about music. They are about what happens outside afterward: shouting in the street at three and four in the morning, people urinating in doorways, broken glass, drug dealing, cars with their stereos on. Some of those complaining are council tenants who were here long before the first cocktail bar and never asked for any of it.
Planning policy now recognises a principle called agent of change. It means that if a developer builds homes beside an existing venue, it is the developer who should pay for the soundproofing, not the venue. That has helped, though it came too late for some well-loved places.
What the Venues Say
The operators have their own troubles, and they are not mainly about closing times. Rents and business rates are high. Energy, staffing and security cost more each year. Young people are drinking less and going out less often than they did. A venue that loses a licence review, or has conditions imposed that make it unviable, rarely reopens, and the unit usually becomes something quieter and more profitable for the landlord.
The night-time economy also employs a great many people, from bar staff and door supervisors to cleaners, sound engineers and cab drivers. City Hall has appointed officials to champion it, and extended night services run by Transport for London were introduced partly to get people home safely and quickly, which is the single thing residents most want.
Is There a Way Through
The most promising work is the least dramatic. Schemes in which venues jointly fund street wardens and extra cleaning have made a visible difference on some streets. Better management of queues and smokers outside the door helps. So does staggering closing times so that the whole district does not empty onto the pavement at once. None of this makes a headline, and all of it matters more than the hour on the licence.
What I would resist is the idea that one side must win. A Shoreditch with no nightlife would be a row of flats and offices with nothing to distinguish it from a dozen other districts. A Shoreditch that ignored its residents would be unliveable and, before long, unpoliceable. The neighbourhood’s character comes from the friction between the two.
I say this as someone who has stood on both sides of the glass. I have been the person singing on that corner. I have also been the person upstairs, drafting the letter. It was a very good letter. I never sent it, and at eleven the following Friday I was back in the queue.
The Shoreditch night out is a reliable comic subject, and the British satirical news desk has covered it with affection, as have the British Onion writers and NewsThump. If you see a report that a council has banned fun altogether, run it past the UK satirical news checklist before you share it. The real policy is duller and more interesting. My other local reporting is on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
