A row over Soho’s pubs has reached Downing Street after Westminster City Council published draft licensing rules encouraging venues to reduce standing drinking in favour of tables and waiter service.
Reports that the council wants to ban standing in pubs got a furious denial from Westminster. There’s no proposal forcing existing customers into chairs, and standing at the bar with a pint isn’t becoming an offence. But the row didn’t come from nowhere either.
The council’s draft licensing policy specifically encourages more seating instead of open bar areas built for what it calls “high-volume vertical drinking.” It also discusses table service and reducing standing drinking when considering licences in parts of the West End. That’s been enough to drag Sadiq Khan, Downing Street, pub owners and hospitality campaigners into an increasingly bad-tempered argument.
What Westminster is actually proposing
No borough-wide standing ban. Existing customers aren’t being told to sit down before getting served. The draft instead sets out how the licensing authority would handle applications, particularly inside the West End Cumulative Impact Zone covering Soho and the surrounding nightlife area.
It encourages licensed premises to offer more seating, with customers ordering from tables rather than large open bar areas built for standing crowds. There’s also a presumption that new applications for pubs, bars, fast-food premises and entertainment venues within the zone will normally be refused, though each still gets considered individually. Most controversially, the document says reducing “vertical drinking” could help address the concerns behind that tougher stance.
So no straightforward ban. But a new venue, or one seeking a significant licence change, could have a stronger case if its business model leans toward seated customers over people standing around drinking. That’s the part hospitality businesses are worried about.
Soho landlords aren’t buying the distinction
Sacha Lord, previously Andy Burnham’s night-time economy adviser in Greater Manchester, called Westminster the “most anti-hospitality council in the UK” and compared the proposals to Covid-era restrictions. Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, said standing is an ordinary part of British pub culture and warned reducing standing space would cut capacity and raise operating costs.
That matters especially in Soho, where some pubs sit on tiny premises with extremely high rents and rates. Fill the same room with tables and fewer people fit inside. Lesley Lewis, owner of Soho’s famous French House, said her business relies on standing customers and warned restricting them could “finish off” venues running on costs like hers.
The problem’s not hard to see. Plenty of Soho pubs weren’t designed as restaurants. Standing at the bar, squeezing into a corner with friends, moving around the room, that’s just how they work.
Khan and Downing Street get involved
Sadiq Khan called Westminster’s approach “restrictive and anti-growth” and wants greater powers over licensing decisions. His own verdict online was less bureaucratic: “You can’t run a world-famous nightlife district with a village-hall mindset.”
Downing Street’s now weighed in too. A No 10 spokesperson told Sky News that busy pubs are “not a public nuisance” but part of British life, and urged the council to work with landlords and the wider industry. That fits neatly with Burnham’s own push to make struggling hospitality businesses an early priority, including a 20% business rates cut for pubs, clubs and smaller live music venues from April 2027. Downing Street intervening against a policy it sees as making life harder for exactly those businesses was fairly predictable.
Westminster says it’s been misrepresented
Council leader Paul Swaddle didn’t hold back: “There is no plan, and never has been, to ban drinking while standing up in a Westminster pub.” He said the goal was public safety, not dictating how people drink, and insisted Westminster wants its nightlife economy to thrive. Deputy leader Tim Barnes called the standing-ban suggestion “utterly ludicrous” and a misreading of the proposals.
The council points to its wider record too. Barnes says Westminster has around 4,000 licensed premises and rejects fewer than 1.5% of applications, recently approving a new Covent Garden pub and letting the Leicester Square McDonald’s run 24 hours. Not exactly the record of a council trying to shut down every bar in Soho.
That doesn’t make the controversial wording in the new draft disappear, though. Westminster can reasonably argue “ban” overstates it, the Guardian actually amended its own headline from “ban standing” to “limit standing.” Hospitality businesses can equally point out that a policy explicitly favouring seating and table service, while flagging reduced “vertical drinking” as potentially helpful, could genuinely shape what future Soho pubs are allowed to look like.
That’s the actual argument now playing out. The proposals are still under consultation, so nothing’s settled. What started as a fairly dry licensing document has somehow united publicans, hospitality campaigners, City Hall and Downing Street around one unexpectedly potent principle: telling Londoners where they’re allowed to stand with a pint is asking for trouble.
Leave a Reply