London,
29
February
2024
|
09:15
Europe/London

Working with and listening to our communities – Camden’s Evening and Night Time Strategy

Camden’s cabinet agreed last night (Wednesday 28 February) to approve, adopt and implement an innovative strategy and action plan for the evening and night-time in Camden.

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Councillor Danny Beales, Cabinet Member for New Homes, Jobs and Community Investment

Despite our reputation of being one of the most visited boroughs in the capital, we know there are many threats to Camden’s evening and night-time economy. 

In 2011, we had the sixth largest night-time economy in the UK, with an annual turnover of £955.9m. Since then though the sector has suffered numerous blows. Covid hit hard despite huge efforts to plug the gaps. Inflation, energy costs and staffing challenges is preventing them from bouncing back. Over the last five years we have seen a real reduction in music venues, galleries, dance venues, LGBT venues and pubs.

The evening and night-time in Camden is not however just pubs and clubs, it is firstly about all our local residents who call this area home and their local communities, as well as the porter or nurse on a night shift in our local NHS trusts, the transport workers keeping the tube and buses moving, and all those working in our venues and theatres, who make up one in three jobs in the borough.

We also want to address issues relating to the experiences of women travelling through the borough, particularly at night, to ensure they feel safer in Camden and the need to promote more family friendly and inclusive, non-alcohol-led experiences in the early evening.

We are committed to working to preserve a dynamic evening and night-time economy, recognising this as one of the things that makes Camden special - promoting music, art and cultural experiences.  We will support responsible businesses to open and to thrive in Camden, whilst at the same time balancing the needs of visitors and businesses with those of our residents.

Councillor Danny Beales, Cabinet Member for New Homes, Jobs and Community Investment
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Key recommendations of the strategy include:

  • Create an evening and night panel for Camden.
  • Work with local business groups to promote family friendly and inclusive, non-alcohol-led experiences in the early evening.
  • Promote recreation and wellbeing in the evening and night-time and use meanwhile opportunities to create safe, fun and inclusive recreational resources.
  • Develop a business rates discount scheme to support grassroots music venues and Camden's cultural legacy.
  • Implement a Licensing Charter to complement our Statement of Licensing Policy, setting standards of best practice and incentivising good management in the evening and night-time.
  • Investing more money in cleaning of high streets at night and increasing the coordination of how we manage night-time hotspots.
  •  Pilot night and evening markets.

The strategy also reinforces our key objective to address issues relating to the experiences of women travelling through the borough, particularly at night, to make them feel safer in Camden and to ensure that if they do suffer harassment or abuse, there are resources available to them to report these incidents.

It also takes into consideration the recommendations of our Diversity in the Public Realm Strategy by seeking to promote inclusion and bring new audiences into the public realm and to use services and access culture at night.

We undertook extensive public engagement between October 2022 to March 2023, reaching around 1,600 people either through feedback on our Commonplace website or attending one of eight area-based or thematic workshops which gathered insight on the evening and night-time.

We also held a Citizens Assembly to help develop the strategy with residents, visitors, night-workers and businesses. The assemblies were focussed on ways of improving Camden at night and ways to support local businesses to thrive.

Councillor Beales continued:

“Ours Citizens’ Assembly on the Evening and Night-Time brought together 47 randomly selected members of the public who live, work or own or run businesses in the borough.

“Our Assemblies bring together a representative range of our residents, industry experts and key partners to create recommendations on a way forward, and their recommendations were the foundation of our strategy and also support a future refreshed licensing policy, which was discussed in general terms with assembly members.”

 

  • You can read the Camden Evening and Night-Time Economy Report online here.
  • Camden held a citizens assembly to help develop the borough’s first Evening and Night Time Strategy with residents, visitors, night-workers and businesses in Camden. The assemblies were focussed on ways of improving Camden at night and ways to support local businesses to thrive:
  • The Evening and Night Time Citizens Assembly was held on 18 February, 25 February and 4 March at Woburn House Conference Centre.
  • 50 Assembly members were invited to attend and were chosen from nearly 300 applicants who represented businesses, residents, visitors, and night workers with an interest in Camden’s nightlife.
  • Assembly members were chosen randomly and anonymously against set criteria weighted to ensure a distribution of interests, background and demography that reflected the borough as best as possible.
  • The report of the Citizens Assembly has been published by the Council.
  • A Full Council themed debate on Developing an Evening and Night Time Strategy for Camden, which included the Citizens Assembly report, was held on the 20th November 2023 - https://democracy.camden.gov.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=61668