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Community groups to be charged 1 per cent of income to play music 5

Finance | Gareth Jones | 25 Jul 2011

Community groups have expressed their dismay after music licensing group PPL announced that they would have to pay 1 per cent of their “defined income” in order to play music at licensed events.

The Community Sector Law Monitoring Group (CSLMG) said campaigners are “furious” that PPL had announced the charge when it considered negotiations to be ongoing.

The Group has been in discussions with PPL on the change for the past two years, in which it has argued that community groups cannot afford the fees.

PPL’s newly-announced 1 per cent charge applies to organisations with income above £10,000; those below will pay a flat year annual fee of £42, an amount which had been agreed with the CSLMG.

These fees will be in addition to those that will be levied by the PRS, the other main music licensing organisation.

Defined income, according to PPL, is that received from the likes of door, food and bar takings, building hire charges and subscriptions, and excluding VAT, capital grants, revenue grants, interest from accounts, gifts and donations.

The changes come after the government removed voluntary and community organisations’ statutory exemption from licensing charges, although the licensing bodies agreed to delay the implementation of a charge until 1 January 2012.

Discussions “were moving forward”

In a letter to PPL, CSLMG’s chair and Community Matters chief executive David Tyler said: “We all felt that our discussions with PPL were moving forward and that this was encouraged by PPL asking us to provide more information at each meeting.

“We have all invested considerable time and effort into substantiating our proposals for further improvements to a community buildings tariff and understood that you were considering them very seriously. As your letter makes no reference to our proposals, I now have to wonder whether this was really the case.”

He later added: “We have not been fighting these charges out of a sense of entitlement but because many of our members simply cannot afford to pay for them.

"To a group with an income of £50,000 a year, a total of £1,000 on music fees is a great deal of money and often the difference between running a service or not.

"Furthermore the charges have no relationship to the amount of music a community group is likely to play; it’s just a way of wringing more money out of small charities.”

Similar scheme for buildings

In a statement, PPL denied that CSLMG had not agreed the change, and said it was disappointed with the Group's comments. 

“CSLMG requested a joint licensing scheme that was easy to administer and with a level of fees that was appropriate to their members' use of recorded music. 

“The equivalent PRS for Music scheme, based on 1 per cent of community buildings’ income, had been agreed by CSLMG and has been in operation for ten years.  

“PPL therefore agreed with CSLMG to follow similar lines for its own scheme.”

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