REMEL Report: Black Music Events Face More Licensing Blocks

The Race Equality in Music Event Licensing report, known as REMEL, was published on 14 October 2026 by Black Lives in Music (BLiM) and concludes, according to its authors, that Black and South Asian music events in London face more cancellations, restrictions and heavy conditions than white-led events. The study was commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the REMEL Taskforce, and it puts the cost at an estimated £127 million to £141 million in lost live music spend every year, or more than £650 million over five years. Its sharpest finding for club culture is that Temporary Event Notices (TENs), the one-off permissions behind many pop-ups and one-night parties, were more likely to receive a formal counter notice in London's most diverse boroughs. Mixmag reported the story on the day of publication, and we have gone to the report itself to check what it actually says.

That second step matters, because the headline numbers are easy to repeat and easy to misread. The money figures are modelled estimates built on small samples and expert judgement, the report's authors say so themselves, and one figure in circulation (£114 million a year) does not appear in the documents we read. Below: what REMEL found, how it was done, how the licensing machinery works, what it means for underground nights, who has responded, and what we think.

What did the REMEL study find?

REMEL's central claim is that licensing and policing in London treat events differently depending on the music, the promoter and the expected audience, to the disadvantage of Black and South Asian scenes. The report lists 12 key findings. BLiM's own summary and the full report group them as follows.

Where do the money figures come from?

The £1.1 billion starts with UK Music's figure of £2.7 billion total live music spend in London in 2024, then applies a 41% share for Black and South Asian music. That share is a national genre proxy of 27% (hip hop, rap, R&B and reggae in the BPI's genre breakdown) with a 50% uplift to reflect London's demographics. The report admits genre is "far from a perfect proxy" for race.

The annual loss then adds two things. About £25.3 million comes from events that did not take place at all (5% of events affected, 46% of those not going ahead, so roughly 2.3% of events). A further £109.4 million comes from a modelled 10% rise in activity that promoters said would be realistic if police intervention risk fell. Together that is £134.5 million in the mid case, with a low scenario around £80 million and a high one around £189 million. A separate £8.4 million is estimated to have been diverted away from Black and South Asian artists in 2024 when performers were replaced. The report's own footnote says key inputs came from "a small number" of promoters, venues and booking agents, while arguing the range is plausible given the other evidence.

What about the £114 million figure?

Mixmag's report says the pattern costs the scene about £114 million a year. We could not find £114 million in the executive summary, the full report, BLiM's announcement or the coverage from Music Week, the BBC, the Guardian, The Voice or Neon Music. All of those use £127 million to £141 million (the report's body text once prints it as £129 million to £141 million). The nearest number we saw is £109.4 million, the 10% growth component. Treat £114 million as unconfirmed.

How was the study done, and who is behind it?

REMEL is a project, not a one-off survey. It began in July 2023 after the Musicians' Union and Black Lives in Music wrote jointly to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. A taskforce chaired by Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries Justine Simons OBE oversaw it, with the GLA, the Metropolitan Police Service, UK Music, LIVE and the Musicians' Union among those involved.

Who commissioned and authored it, as far as we can verify:

• Commissioned by: the report's acknowledgements thank the REMEL Taskforce and the GLA "for commissioning the publication". The BBC and the Guardian both describe it as commissioned by the GLA or the Mayor's office. Mixmag does not name a commissioner.
• Published by: Black Lives in Music. The listed authors are Dr Diljeet Bhachu, Chris Carey, Raven Ddungu, Simon Hood, Matthew Johnson, Dr Hakeem Stevens and Charisse Beaumont, BLiM's chief executive.
• Selection of researchers: an open tender, with a panel from the GLA, the Musicians' Union and BLiM. The report says an indicative budget was set. We could not find the amount.
• Supporting roles: Sound Diplomacy analysed the survey, eight researchers at King's College London did desk research, and Reed Smith LLP provided legal drafting for the Freedom of Information requests.

The evidence base, per the report's methodology section:

• A BLiM survey that ran from 6 February to 6 June 2025.
• Interviews and focus groups with 34 participants, including artists, promoters, venue operators, managers and licensing experts.
• More than 80 Freedom of Information requests, including to all 33 London local authorities, the Home Office, DCMS, TfL and the Met. The report says most were partially fulfilled or rejected, and the Met refused its requests, although the Met's chief licensing officer, a project contributor, supplied a limited dataset on TENs and licensing reviews.
• Workshops, desk research and analysis of public licensing records.

The report is upfront about its limits: no consistent race data across licensing and enforcement systems, non-standard reporting between boroughs, no centralised economic data, and self-selecting survey and interview samples that it says are not representative of the wider sector and could not be weighted. In the sections we read we did not find a side-by-side cancellation rate for comparable white-led events. The "more than white-led events" claim rests on testimony, case studies, borough-level TEN patterns and expert estimates, so it is better read as a well-documented pattern of concern than a precise measured gap. The BBC notes that the report says South Asian music is largely invisible in licensing records and that the evidence did not show South Asian events being disproportionately cancelled, though they were often given heavier conditions.

Also worth knowing: the authors include BLiM itself, an advocacy charity, and the steering group included the bodies being scrutinised. That cuts both ways. It gave access and buy-in, and it also means this is not an arm's-length audit.

What are Temporary Event Notices and Form 696?

A Temporary Event Notice is a one-off permission to carry out licensable activity, such as selling alcohol or providing entertainment, at premises that do not already hold the right licence. The government's TEN guidance sets the rules in the table below.

The detail that matters for REMEL: a council cannot refuse a standard TEN on its own initiative. A refusal needs a police or environmental health objection on crime and disorder, public nuisance, public safety or child protection grounds, which then leads to a counter notice or a hearing. If a late TEN is objected to, it is invalid. That is why the report treats TEN outcomes as a window into police influence.

What did the TEN data show?

The report's own analysis uses TEN statistics for England and Wales: 906,029 notices in England and Wales from 2011 to 2022, with 0.6% receiving a counter notice. In London over the same period, 1.7% received one, and 2.3% were withdrawn against 1.4% nationally. For 2023/24, its borough table lists Tower Hamlets with 1,170 valid TENs, 8% of them ending in a counter notice, ahead of Enfield (5%) and Islington (4%). Waltham Forest, Lambeth and the City of London had no data. It then plots borough counter-notice rates against each borough's minority ethnic population and reports a positive trend, from Richmond upon Thames (20%) to Newham (69%).

Two cautions. First, this is a correlation across boroughs, not a record of the ethnicity of applicants, and the report gives no correlation statistic in the text we read. Second, the figures are not perfectly tidy: Newham, the most diverse borough, shows only a 1% counter-notice rate in the 2023/24 table, and the narrative text on the same pages names different boroughs and percentages from the table. The trend is real in the report's chart, but the individual borough figures deserve a careful read before anyone quotes them.

What was Form 696?

Form 696 was a Metropolitan Police risk assessment introduced in 2005 after shootings at promoted nights in London. Before a 2008 revision it asked organisers whether a particular ethnic group would be attending and what music style would be played, with examples such as bashment, R&B and garage, according to Daze. Critics said it profiled Black music, grime above all. After a review Khan ordered in September 2017, the Met announced on 10 November 2017 that it would scrap the form and move to a voluntary partnership approach. Khan said the decision "will help London's night-time economy thrive". REMEL's argument is that the form is gone but its logic, genre as a stand-in for risk, survives in current risk assessments. The Met's own position, per the BBC, is that it will carefully consider the findings.

What does it mean for club and underground nights in London?

The report is about Black and South Asian music, and much of its evidence concerns Afrobeats, hip hop, drill, R&B, dancehall, garage and bhangra. But three of its findings land squarely on the electronic underground.

First, overnight events are structurally exposed. One venue operator in the report points out that electronic music runs until 3, 4 or 5 a.m., when police resources are thinnest, so these events get treated as a problem when the real constraint is staffing. Second, the City of London's "No Promoted Events" condition, Model Condition 2, bars venues from hosting external promoters or freelance DJs not employed by the licence holder. The report argues that this effectively locks independent and minority promoters out of the Square Mile, and the independent, collective-led route is exactly how most underground nights get started. Third, the TEN is the pop-up's lifeline, and a regime where objections can land late and without published evidence is a risk for every one-off party, whatever the music.

The report also quotes promoters describing a retreat to the underground: events with venue addresses released on the night to avoid police attention, and one promoter's account of a DJ who shifted into the house scene to keep working. It also quotes a participant who describes a techno night where no one policed them, in contrast to the metal detectors and hostile security they associate with Black events. These are individual testimonies, and the report presents them as such.

This also sits against a bleak backdrop for UK nightlife. Our look at why the UK keeps losing its nightclubs covers the rates, cumulative impact zones and call-in powers squeezing venues, and our Europe club closures tracker puts the British picture next to Berlin, Paris and the US. When rooms are scarce, whoever is treated as the riskiest booking loses first. The commercial side is no kinder: our data on underground DJ economics shows how thin the margins already are before an unexpected cancellation lands. And while the big London reopenings, like Printworks, get council approval and headlines, the small-room end of the ecosystem is where REMEL says the pressure falls.

How have the Mayor, police and industry responded?

Responses so far are supportive in tone from the industry and cautious from the police, and we found no council-level response in the coverage we read.

• City Hall: Justine Simons OBE, the Deputy Mayor who chaired the steering group, says the report "shines a spotlight" on concerning challenges and that the Mayor is committed to doing all he can, citing new licensing powers from government. Her statement appears in the report. We could not load the GLA's own project page, which was redirecting to a maintenance page.
• Metropolitan Police: Commander Neerav Patel told the BBC and the Guardian (syndicated copy) that the force would carefully consider the findings, that its focus remains fair, evidence-based contributions to licensing, and that keeping Londoners safe is its priority, per the BBC's syndicated report. BLiM's Charisse Beaumont said the Mayor and the Met had welcomed the findings, per Music Week. The Met's own words are more guarded than that.
• Councils: Hackney's Sam Mathys, cabinet member for culture and nightlife, says boroughs like Hackney are ready to be part of the change. London Councils was reportedly asked for comment by the BBC and no response was reported. The Institute of Licensing's Paul Adams called it an opportunity for licensing professionals to reflect.
• Industry: UK Music's Tom Kiehl called the findings "highly alarming". LIVE's Jon Collins said a skewed perception of risk leads to over-policing. Music Venue Trust's Mark Davyd called it the most important research on barriers to culture the live sector has had in years. The London Nightlife Taskforce chair, Cameron Leslie, said the report gives the Nightlife Commission a benchmark.

What does REMEL recommend?

The report makes 19 recommendations. The ones most relevant to promoters:

• An independent review of the licensing system, with Home Office and GLA backing, examining racial fairness and police influence.
• A national licensing policy framework, an ombudsman or review body, and equality and human rights duties written into licensing law.
• Clear evidence standards, replacing "high risk" with specific, substantiated concerns.
• Annual publication of licensing outcomes by genre, promoter ethnicity and audience demographics.
• Repeal of "No Promoted Events" conditions and reform of cumulative impact zones.
• Longer TEN notice periods, evidence thresholds for objections, and automatic approval with proportionate conditions where objections are unsubstantiated.
• Cost recovery after overturned objections, relief funding, promoter accreditation, and cultural liaison officers retained in licensing and police teams.

What we make of it

This section is RTS.FM's own opinion, separate from the reported findings above.

1. The process findings are stronger than the pound signs. The case for transparent evidence standards and published licensing data does not depend on whether the loss is £114 million, £134.5 million or £189 million. Late objections without disclosed evidence, no affordable appeal and informal verbal pressure are all problems the report documents through testimony and case files. Strongest counter-argument: those are mostly accounts from self-selected participants, and police and licensing officers were not interviewed, so the picture is one-sided by design.
2. Electronic music should not file this under "someone else's problem". The same levers, overnight policing resource, objections to TENs, blanket conditions like Model Condition 2, hit every independent promoter without a venue or a lawyer. Fixing them for one community would make life easier for everyone running a first party. Strongest counter-argument: the report measures Black and South Asian-led events, and nothing in it shows that white-led house and techno nights are being treated better or worse at scale, so the electronic scene's stake is inferred.
3. Publishing the data is the cheapest test of the claim. If the pattern is real, genre and promoter data by borough will show it, and if it is overstated, the same data will show that too. Either outcome is better than a standoff over anecdotes, and the report itself lists missing race data as a core limitation. Strongest counter-argument: recording promoter ethnicity raises privacy and consistency questions, and licensing teams the report itself says are facing cuts may not be able to take on the extra work.
4. Safety and fairness are not opposites, and the debate should say so. The report is explicit that the issue is how risk is interpreted, not the purpose of public protection, and the police have a real duty to act on serious violence at events. A licensing regime that can explain itself protects crowds and promoters at the same time. Strongest counter-argument: some intelligence is sensitive or time-critical, and rigid disclosure rules could slow decisions that have to be made quickly to stop real harm.

Whatever happens next, the test is simple: whether a promoter applying for a TEN in a borough with a long history of objections can see, next spring, a decision that comes with reasons, evidence and a route to challenge it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the REMEL report?

REMEL stands for Race Equality in Music Event Licensing. It is a report published on 14 October 2026 by Black Lives in Music as part of Project REMEL, a multi-agency initiative that began in July 2023. It examines how licensing and policing affect Black and South Asian music events in London.

Who commissioned the REMEL study?

The report's acknowledgements thank the REMEL Taskforce and the Greater London Authority for commissioning it, and the BBC and the Guardian describe it as commissioned by the GLA or the Mayor's office. Black Lives in Music carried out and published the research. We could not find the budget or the amount of funding.

How many Black music events were cancelled in London?

The report does not give a single count of cancelled events. It relies on an expert estimate from London promoters, venues and booking agents that about 1 in 20 events, or 5%, are affected by police activity, and a survey in which 46% of police-affected cases ended with the venue closed.

What are the headline REMEL figures?

The report estimates £1.1 billion of London live music spend linked to Black and South Asian music in 2024, an annual loss of £127 million to £141 million, and more than £650 million lost over five years if current conditions continue. These are modelled estimates, not measured sales losses.

Where does the £114 million figure come from?

Mixmag cites about £114 million a year. We could not find that number in the REMEL executive summary, the full report, Black Lives in Music's announcement or other coverage. The report uses £127 million to £141 million, so we treat the £114 million figure as unconfirmed.

What is a Temporary Event Notice?

A Temporary Event Notice is a one-off permission for licensable activity, such as selling alcohol or providing entertainment, at premises without the right licence. It costs £21, covers fewer than 500 people for up to 7 days, and can only be blocked if the police or environmental health object on licensing grounds.

Can a council refuse a Temporary Event Notice?

Not on its own initiative. Only the police or environmental health can object, within 3 working days, on grounds of crime and disorder, public nuisance, public safety or protecting children. A licensing committee then decides whether to approve it, add conditions or reject it, and a late notice that is objected to cannot go ahead.

What was Form 696?

Form 696 was a Metropolitan Police risk assessment form introduced in 2005 after shootings at promoted nights. Critics said it targeted music popular with Black audiences, particularly grime. The Met announced it would scrap the form on 10 November 2017 after a review ordered by Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Does the report prove racial discrimination in London licensing?

It documents a pattern through testimony, case studies, borough-level TEN statistics and modelled estimates, and concludes that bias exists. It also states limits, including a lack of race data, refused Freedom of Information requests and non-representative samples, so it does not provide a precise measured gap against white-led events.

What are the REMEL recommendations?

The 19 recommendations include an independent review of licensing, a national licensing framework, equality duties in licensing law, clear evidence standards for objections, annual published licensing data, repeal of "No Promoted Events" conditions, longer TEN notice periods and funding and training support for promoters.