A QUIRK in the law means several roads in Winchester have been given entertainment licences for shows and performances.

Bosses at Winchester City Council have issued the licences to ensure the city's Hat Fair can go ahead later this month. The new licensing laws introduced last year threw a spanner in the works.

The changes to the licensing laws had cast a doubt over the legality of the fair, because each venue where acts wanted to perform had to have their own entertainment license.

The Hat Fair is a festival of street performances, it has meant the local authority has needed to grant temporary entertainment licences to several roads and pavements including The Broadway, The High Street and Middlebrook Street.

Other venues including the steps and forecourt of The Great Hall, Orams Arbour and the Outer Close of the Cathedral have also been granted the licences. The licence for the Great Hall runs from the Wednesday, before the festival starts, to allow for rehearsals.

The changes also meant Winchester has had to drop part of its city centre alcohol exclusion zone, which was enacted last July just a week after the Hat Fair ended.

The move made it illegal to drink in public in a large part of the city centre, including areas such as Abbey Gardens and the Cathedral Green which used to be blighted by gangs of street drinkers.

It also gave police the power to take drinks from offenders if they considered them excessively intoxicated, and arrest and detain anyone who resisted.

The government's new laws also included a section making it impossible to grant an entertainment license to an area where there was an alcohol exclusion zone.

Accordingly WCC has agreed to ditch parts of the exclusion zone where performances are taking place over the three-day Hat Fair, which starts on Friday June 30.

Bureaucracy' John Myall, licensing and registration manager for WCC, said: "It is unfortunate now that a charity event that has taken place for many years and not required an entertainment licence is suddenly veiled in bureaucracy."

Inspector Kevin Baxman from Hampshire Constabulary in Winchester, added: "The alcohol exclusion zone will remain in place throughout the Hat Fair.

"Certain areas of the Hat Fair will be licensed and officers will be aware of those areas.

"We will continue to police the area properly, professionally and effectively.

"If people think the Hat Fair is an opportunity to ignore the alcohol exclusion zone then they are wrong."