Nuisance

The Administrative Court dismissed the claimant’s application for judicial review of the defendant local authority’s decision to licence busking. The policy was sufficiently comprehensible and the totality of the evidence before the authority had entitled it to conclude that the requirements of s 33(2) of the London Local Authorities Act 2000 were complied with. The court applied established authority in holding that although the right to free expression under Art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights was engaged, it operated at a low level. The alternative measures available to the authority were not less restrictive and, certainly, were not equivalent to the powers under the 2000 Act for dealing in a comprehensive way with buskers. Accordingly, the authority had adopted a policy which was both necessary and a proportionate response to the issue of busking.