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  2. Business
  3. Licences, permits and registrations
  4. Sex establishments
  5. Sex establishment policy

Some online services unavailable on Saturday 23 November and Monday 25 November

Due to essential maintenance some of our online services will be unavailable over the next few days.

  • On Saturday 23 November between 9am–5pm you will be unable to view your council tax, council tax support and housing benefits accounts or documents while we upgrade our systems.
  • On Monday 25 November between 6–11pm our online parking services will be unavailable. During this time, you won’t be able to review or pay for parking tickets or buy parking permits or visitor vouchers.

We are sorry for any inconvenience while we carry out these necessary works.

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Sex establishment policy

This policy sets out our proposed approach to regulating sex establishments and the procedure that we will adopt in relation to applications for sex establishment licences.

  1. Overview
  2. Limits on the number of premises
  3. Location of premises
  1. Impact
  2. Applicants
  3. Premises appearance and layout

Limits on the number of licensed premises

We have determined that there are a sufficient number of sex shops, sex cinemas and sexual entertainment venues currently operating in the borough and we do not want to see an increase in the numbers of premises that are currently providing these activities.

We have adopted a policy to limit the number of sexual entertainment venues in the borough to ‘nil’; however we recognise that there are a number of businesses that have been providing sexual entertainment in Islington for several years.

As a result, we will not apply this limitation when considering renewal applications for premises that were trading prior to 1 April 2011 with express permission for the type of entertainment which is now defined as sexual entertainment, if they can continue to demonstrate:

  • high standards of management
  • a management structure and capacity to operate the venue 
  • the ability to adhere to the standard conditions for sex establishments.

We will consider each application on its merit although new applicants will have to demonstrate why we should depart from the ‘nil’ policy.

Furthermore, if any of the existing premises cease trading there is no presumption that we will consider any new applications more favourably.

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