Committee publication · Correspondence · 28 April 2026
Music Venue Trust response to the Fan-led review of live and electronic music Special Report, 23 April 2026
Summary
Music Venue Trust responds to the Fan-Led Review of Live and Electronic Music (HC 1628), urging the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to treat it together with its own 2024 report (HC 527) as a unified parliamentary statement. MVT argues that while fans' ambitions for grassroots venues are sound, they are undeliverable under current financial conditions—venues operated at 2.5% average margins with a £76.6m collective shortfall in 2025—and calls on the Committee to hold government accountable for implementing specific structural reforms across VAT, business rates, Agent of Change legislation, mandatory levies, and community ownership frameworks.
Key findings
- Grassroots music venues collectively ran a £76.6m shortfall in 2025 with average margins of 2.5%; more than half of venues returned no profit, and 30 closed permanently while fans articulated their support for the sector in the Fan-Led Review.
- HC 1628's ambitions for safer, more accessible, diverse, and sustainable venues are largely undeliverable without financial stability; best-practice examples (The Black Box Belfast, The Snug Atherton, Le Pub Newport) all operate on non-profit models with local authority partnership and public funding.
- The voluntary arena and stadium levy has reached only 30% compliance against a 50% target for end-December 2025; at projected 2026 receipts of £5m, it addresses only 6.5% of the sector shortfall even before accounting for shares to artists and promoters.
- Agent of Change principle, rejected by House of Commons as 'not necessary' despite House of Lords passage, leaves venues funding their own legal enforcement at £20,000–£50,000 per case; MVT proposes a transparent annual £1.5m government fund to meet these costs.
- 66% of survey respondents would consider purchasing community shares in their local venue; MVT's Music Venue Properties programme demonstrates this is achievable with seven venues now in community ownership, but broader scaling requires government-supported acquisition pathways.
Tone
AdversarialTopics
Key actors
Music Venue Trust, Lord Brennan of Canton, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, UK Government (DCMS), The Black Box Belfast, The Snug Atherton, Le Pub Newport, LIVE Trust
Notable line
“Grassroots music venues are not failing to deliver what fans want because they do not share the fans' values. They are failing to deliver it because they do not have the resources.”
Key Quotes
“The Committee occupies a position that no other body in this debate holds. Through its two reports, it has established both the structural diagnosis of the sector's condition and the public mandate for addressing it.”
“Grassroots music venues ran a collective shortfall of £76.6 million in 2025, a figure HC 1628 itself cites at page 28, drawn from MVT's 2025 Annual Report. Average margins were 2.5%. More than half of all venues returned no profit.”
“… the ambitions of the Fan-Led Review are, almost without exception, downstream of a financially stable venue network. Better accessibility requires capital investment that venues cannot make from zero margin.”
“The review found best practice where the financially challenging operating environment of the sector has been directly addressed, through ownership and/or public funding.”
“The voluntary approach has not reached its targets. It was to have covered 50% of qualifying tickets by 31 December 2025; current compliance is approximately 30%.”
“Fan voice without fan agency is advocacy. Fan voice with community ownership behind it is structural change.”
“The UK taxes grassroots tickets at 20%, double Germany's rate, quadruple France's, and at an infinite multiple of Norway's, which applies zero.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗