Ministers agree to radical overhaul of child performance licensing

Ministers have accepted the need for a radical overhaul of the country’s 40-year-old laws covering child performances as well as a more targeted and proportionate approach to inspection and enforcement by local authorities.

In the government’s initial response to a report by Sarah Thane, former chair of the Royal Television Society, Exploratory review of the system for regulating child performances, Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw agreed that the system was “in clear need of up-dating and future proofing”.

The existing regulations and licensing system were brought into force in 1968 under the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, when only three TV channels existed.

Thane’s main recommendations were:

• The system of licensing child performance needs urgent and radical overhaul and re-balancing, although responsibility for issuing licences should remain with local authorities. The application process should be streamlined and speeded up, while local authorities should also share knowledge and good practice – with some acting as centres of expertise
• A system of inspection and enforcement by local authorities needs to be developed that is targeted and proportionate to risk, that operates to agreed criteria and encourages best practice among employers
• Consideration should be given to removing the licensing requirements for the amateur and youth productions sector
• The provision of good quality education should be an important part of the licence requirements
• The prohibition on under 14s taking part in performance beyond the specified exemptions should be removed as soon as practicable
• The chaperone role should have greater ‘professional’ status to recognise their function in safeguarding the children under their control, and
• The government should include a definition of performance in future legislation.

In a letter to Thane, the ministers said they accepted that there are “some difficult issues linked to aspects of the regulatory arrangements”, adding that the review’s proposals offered a pragmatic combination of statutory and other mechanisms to address these problems.

The ministers said: “We also welcome your aspiration that creating a more streamlined, proportionate and risk based licensing approach should be deliverable within existing resources, as a result of efficiencies in the processing of applications and other savings or re-prioritisation. This will underpin our approach to implementation.”

The government plans to introduce the changes resulting from the review “as soon as practicably possible”, subject to identification of the best implementation mechanism, resource implications and consultation. Some of the proposed changes will require amendment of primary legislation while others can be achieved through secondary legislation or guidance.

The ministers added that an essential ingredient that is missing from the current arrangements is a relationship of greater openness and mutual understanding between licensing officers and employers and production companies.

The government agreed that responsibility for issuing licences should remain with local authorities, “provided the changes [the review] proposes deliver greater consistency and that appropriate expertise can be built into the arrangements”.