The Song Remains the Same

Prog Rock vs Punk: Why Local Government is Saving Music Faster Than Westminster

There are two ways of playing a guitar solo at the extreme ends of the art. One is that particular form of virtuoso playing exemplified by prog rock, Steve Hackett building a line that winds its way across minutes of stage time, clever, inventive, often beautiful, but you do sometimes wonder if it’s ever going to stop. The other is punk, Pete Shelley in What Do I Get, where the solo is over before you’ve even really realised it started, a scrappy burst that does the job and gets out of the way.

These two form of ‘the tricky guitar solo’ is exactly what it feels like working across music policy in Britain, where central government at Westminster is all prog widdly guitars extended beyond human comprehension while local and devolved government is its upstart punk cousin; things might not be technically proficient but they are certainly very loud and very fast. Somewhere in between you will find Music Venue Trust, sitting in on the bass guitar for both bands at once.

Central government plays the long game. It launches consultations, collects submissions, runs inquiries, produces reports, sends them to committees, writes a response, publishes a policy, and then maybe, just maybe, turns the whole thing into something that cobbles itself together into a paper that might, eventually, be debated, amended, edited, revised, adopted, legislated and end up as something that actually works on the ground. The grassroots levy is the best example of this. It began as an idea in 2018, took years of debate, months of evidence, endless rewrites, and finally, in 2024, government said yes, they agreed. Every stadium and arena ticket should contribute to grassroots. A huge win, but one that only arrived after a solo of genuinely epic length. The middle eight of Business rates reform is still being played, while VAT reform is still working out the technical parts of the riff it started playing a decade ago. Late Night Transport hasn’t got past the intro yet. Planning reform has certainly moved into a new section, Agent of Change has entered the National Planning Policy Framework, but every week we still see planning applications where the venue is ignored or noise impact isn’t measured. The prolonged Agent of Change solo is technically brilliant, but you’d forgive the audience for drifting to the bar nine years into it.

Local government does not have time for that. Brighton took the principle of Agent of Change, ran a workshop, produced a guide, trained its planning officers, and started using it. Six separate applications were stopped in one year because someone in the planning office had the knowledge and the courage to say no. Manchester set up a Music Commission under Andy Burnham, asked simple questions about rehearsal space and transport, and started moving things forward. Manchester City Council has gone further again, writing music directly into cultural policy and delivering an investment programme into Grassroots Music Venues. Cardiff created a Music Board, sitting inside the council so that every licensing or planning decision had to be tested against its impact on music. Scotland passed legislation that put music venues into the category of cultural infrastructure, giving local councils more tools to defend them.

The West Midlands and Yorkshire went down another route, investing in networks. They put people in a room, gave them a platform to talk, and left them to work out solutions. These networks are rarely glamorous, often scrappy, sometimes frustrating, but they give venue operators the ability to ring someone who has already solved their problem. Liverpool’s Music Board made sure the sector had a voice in regeneration. Newcastle began testing late-night transport extensions with its venues after lobbying by the local music community. Tees Valley built a cultural strategy with music written into it so that venues in Darlington and Stockton could access regeneration funds. And London, the awkward giant of them all, created the most detailed map of grassroots venues in the country, embedded its Culture at Risk team in City Hall, and has been working with MVT ever since to fend off bad planning. London loses venues like anywhere else, but it has more data and more tools than anyone else to stop the bleeding.

What makes these examples more than theory is that each one has actually delivered something tangible. Brighton’s planning officers used their new guide to reject inadequate surveys and stop developments that would have silenced Alphabet. Manchester City Council announced £245,000 of direct support for GMVs, money administered through Music Venue Trust to reach operators in real time, while the Greater Manchester Music Commission was written into the city’s economic growth plan. Cardiff’s Music Board defended Clwb Ifor Bach when proposed licensing changes threatened its late-night shows. In Scotland, the new planning framework was used to shield multiple venues from the fallout of nearby development. The West Midlands forum gave venues direct access to the Combined Authority and helped create pilot funding for festivals. Yorkshire’s network produced the Bradford Music Scene industry panel, which became a model for connecting artists, promoters and councilors. Liverpool’s Music Board commissioned an economic impact study that forced regeneration plans to acknowledge the value of music. Newcastle’s lobbying produced those late-night bus pilots. Tees Valley’s mayor wrote music into his cultural plan, which has already delivered funds to venues. And in London, the Culture at Risk team helped fend off the development that threatened MOTH Club, mobilising thousands of objections in the process. These are not abstract victories. They are real examples of what a punk attitude can achieve when it plugs in.

None of it is perfect, but then when was punk ever perfect? The whole point is that the riffs are scrappy, the endings sometimes collapse into noise, the ambition is often half-fulfilled. People who live in Manchester or Cardiff or Brighton will tell you not enough is being done, and they are right. People living elsewhere look at those places and wish they had the same structures, and they are right too; the grass is always greener. But even flawed interventions are better than nothing. Even scrappy and sometimes amateurish riffs can keep a venue alive.

That is why Music Venue Trust works in both worlds. We prepare the long submissions for Westminster. We brief MPs, we attend select committees. We also sit in town halls, write the guides, help create boards, support commissions, and pick up the phone to local councilors. Prog and punk, long solos and short riffs. You need both.

Practically, if you are standing in a venue waiting to hear whether your lease will be renewed, if the landlord is going to sell, if the planning application next door is going to be approved, if the last bus home already left an hour ago, you do not care how beautiful and technically brilliant the Westminster solo might eventually be. You want someone to plug in, turn it up, and make a noise now. That is what local government can do, even if it comes with rough edges.

Westminster will always play the long songs and there will always be a need and a space for them. Local government will always bash out the quick ones and they provide a fast and vital input of energy. Both matter.

But if you are trying to keep music alive in your city this year, you know which one you are more likely to hear.