AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 91

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calibrate the risks around each event very accurately, and to get them
in perspective.
Even the most enlightened and experienced local authorities
and event organisers don’t always fully grasp the implications
of putting on a particular event and how to beat risk. However, it
is also easy for the media, in particular, to focus on sensational
risks, rather than the real ones. Last, it’s easy to get the impact of
a genuine risk actually being realised out of proportion with that
risk’s likely prevalence.
The actual prevalence of realised risks is crucial. Rules
for events cannot be organised around a vanishingly small
proportion of actual incidents. Anyone can be run over by a car,
but few propose to end driving as a result. It’s vital not to rush
to glib recommendations, but instead scrutinise the character
and exact number of the incidents that happen. Only that is
truly conscientious; only that can begin to inform a proper and
combined response – not just operationally, but also in terms of
training – from event organisers, the police, ambulance staff and
those in charge of pastoral care.
So have the more liberal provisions of the 2003 Act – ending set
closing times, and granting local authorities control over premises
licensing – had the effect of allowing levels of violence to rise? A
short but systematic review of hospital and police studies in England
and Wales, based on major biomedical databases and conducted by
Cambridge health specialists Caitríona Callan and Adrian Boyle,
looked at 15 studies.
Though the quality of evidence in the studies was poor, they
were revealing. Three found increased rates of violence after
implementation of the Act, five found no significant change and
seven found a decrease. Among nine papers that concerned the
distribution of violent incidents by time, no fewer than eight said that
such incidents had been pushed into the early hours of the morning
– a significant trend, and one which event organisers and everyone
around the licensing process must certainly address. But the authors
insist that ‘there is no evidence for the Act having a significant or
consistent effect on community violence rates, either in emergency
departments or policing’.
The Cambridge review was about the general impact of the Act,
and not specifically about its consequences for violence around
informal events. But let’s stand back from clubs, festivals and events
for a moment.
When crime and violence occur around shopping centres,
transport routes and nodes, or a prison, nobody demands that
these facilities be closed down. Society takes the view that the real
and wholly regrettable damage caused by crime and violence at
these facilities is mitigated by the long-term merit of continuing to
operate them.
Britain needs that approach in dealing with informal events.