PSA: THE BIGGER PICTURE
SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH PSA’s Andy Lenthall looks at what the latest Brexit deal means for live events.
We knew it was coming; leaving the EU would always mean less freedom of movement for goods, vehicles and people. There are issues to deal with, none of them insurmountable – this is event production after all. Of course, announcing a deal on Christmas Eve was a rather cruel twist when most of us were looking forward to a bit of a break; the industry’s most ardent Brexiteers (all six of you) would point out that even the timing was midnight in the EU rather than here. It was pointed out that looking for the words ‘music’, ‘culture’ or ‘entertainment’ in the trade deal returned zero search results, while trawling for ‘fish’ or ‘fishing’ gave a couple of hundred results. Of course, the deal is very heavily weighted to trade in goods, so a keen eye on services linked to our sector was required. It’s not so much about what we are, but what we do, and that is move people and goods temporarily using roadgoing vehicles. The best advice anyone can give at the moment is: don’t panic. At the time of writing, there are certainly some challenges, which are major or minor depending on the type or scale of the events you’re involved with.
Here we can outline some and perhaps sketch out the plans that are already being formed by the industry groups that we’ve been working with for many years. ACCESS FOR TRUCKS This is a tough one. From 1 January, the rules governing the amount of stops a UK-registered haulage vehicle over 3.5t laden weight could make in the EU reduced from four to two. EU hauliers may well soon be restricted to stops in each EU member state. Hauliers have been meeting regularly through the negotiation period to get updates, none of which were positive. As it stands, the only answer is for haulage providers to relocate to an EU country; this puts UK-based technology suppliers at a disadvantage, as they’d be best located near the transport supply. It is no exaggeration that this is a threat to our position as the go-to country for beginning European tours. This could be resolved by separate negotiations with separate member states as, believe it or not, they are not totally governed by the EU. There are multi-department meetings 58
