The Mayor now holds the pen: what London's new licensing powers mean for its late rooms

On Tuesday 3 November 2026 the Mayor of London became, in City Hall's words, the first UK mayor able to make a direct decision on a licensing application. The announcement says Sadiq Khan can now call in applications of strategic importance to London after a borough has decided them, and gives as examples large venues, live music, later opening hours, and major events and festivals. He marked the day at Blue Note, the jazz club whose London room opened in September, with the Secretary of State Angela Rayner.

If you go out in London, or travel to it for music, nothing on any door changed that night. No closing time moved, and no decision under the new power appears in anything we read up to 9 November. What changed is who gets the last word on a short list of applications, and that list is not yet fully public.

This is the part still missing. City Hall says only that the Mayor can step in on applications that meet the Government's criteria, and does not print them. The nearest thing on the record is the draft London Strategic Licensing Policy, consulted on from 12 February to 27 March, which drew 2,418 responses. It proposed three tests: economic impact, location and reputation. Location took in the Central Activities Zone, the London Plan's main night-time areas, some larger town centres, and venues selling drink or putting on entertainment inside a borough's cumulative impact area. Events on a time-limited licence of three months or less were in. Off-licences, club certificates, temporary event notices and firework displays were out.

Those were proposals, marked as subject to change, and the final version has not appeared. The draft said routine decisions stay with boroughs and that the call-in would be used sparingly, as a last resort. A London Assembly committee paper in June said the pilot would run for a minimum of two years. The Assembly counts 36,000 licensed premises in London, 17 per cent of those in England and Wales, so sparingly will be doing some work in that sentence.

The boroughs objected on the day. London Councils, which speaks for them, said the scheme adds burdens for stretched licensing teams, and its executive member Jason Perry said it uses a definition of strategic importance "that is too broad". The group wants City Hall to be open about how applications are picked. Westminster made its case in February, when cabinet member Geoff Barraclough said the plan "means more red tape for business" and argued that effort would be better spent on late transport, business rates and public safety. In September its deputy leader, Tim Barnes, said the council's restrictions were aimed at excessive drunkenness and blamed thin police resourcing for many objections.

Residents have a case too. In June the Soho Society voted to challenge every new bar and restaurant licence application in Soho, and renewals with them, citing crime, noise and litter and saying growth in nightlife had not been matched by infrastructure. The Mayor's office called that decision the wrong one. The Music Venue Trust, the Night Time Industries Association and UKHospitality all welcomed the powers in City Hall's release. Both things can be true: a street can be too loud for the people who sleep on it, and a city can be refusing too many rooms.

For now, nothing differently. Hours on a venue's own listing are still the hours. If later licences do follow, they will arrive one application at a time, each with a borough decision first and a mayoral one after, and we will add them here as they are published. The more immediate limit on a London night is the one Time Out and Transport for London measured in research published on 5 November: 87 per cent of Londoners surveyed had chosen a venue or area because it was easier to get home from, 64 per cent counted live music among the parts of a night out they choose, and 80 per cent said affordability had got worse over ten years. Plan the last train before you plan the last drink.