The Mayor of London launched a consultation yesterday on new licensing powers that would let City Hall override borough decisions for the first time, directly threatening the restrictions Putney residents agreed just seven months ago.
The Draft London Strategic Licensing Policy proposes giving the Mayor a “call-in” power to take over licensing applications he considers strategically important, even after a borough has already made its decision. Applications within areas covered by cumulative impact policies, like the one Wandsworth Council adopted for Putney High Street in July 2025, are explicitly eligible.
The policy also states that cumulative impact assessments “should not create a rebuttable presumption to refuse applications,” which directly contradicts how Wandsworth’s policy works. The Putney restrictions create exactly that presumption for new late-night venues, requiring applicants to prove they will not add to existing problems.
No other mayor in the UK has licensing powers. Not in Greater Manchester, not in the West Midlands, nowhere. This would be entirely new.
The consultation runs for six weeks, closing around 26 March. Two days before it launched, peers in the House of Lords tried to block the powers during debate on the English Devolution Bill. The government refused to accept their amendments.
Baroness Pinnock, the Liberal Democrat peer, called it a “top-down command structure over local democracy.” Conservative Baroness O’Neill warned that “the mayor might not appreciate the local policing capacity, or lack of it, and the implications of that on licensing decisions.” The opposition is bipartisan and extends well beyond Westminster. In April 2025, all 32 London borough leaders (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Independent) united to demand a share of the Mayor’s powers, calling the current system “designed in a different century.”
The problem neither side will fix
The difficulty for Putney residents is that both levels of government are targeting the wrong problem.
This publication has covered Wandsworth council licensing decisions on Putney High Street extensively. The council’s cumulative impact policy was approved on the basis of just 20 supporters out of 27 Putney responses. Officials claimed 191 licensed premises in the area, but many were irrelevant (Waitrose, WHSmith, a nail salon). The real number of late-night, high-risk venues is likely fewer than a dozen. When the policy faced its first test case, officials could not agree on what it said or whether it applied.
But the real crisis on Putney High Street was never licensing. Be At One closed because the landlord hiked the rent. Staff said at the time: “It’s frustrating. The landlord has tried to hike the rent. It’s just too high.” Simmons left Putney as part of a restructuring that abandoned four leases to focus on stronger-performing venues. The High Street has had more than 22 empty shops at a time. The fundamental problem remains landlords demanding rents the local economy cannot support.
The council responded to this with a licensing crackdown rather than addressing rents, vacant properties, or landlord behaviour. Now the Mayor proposes to override even that misguided response, not by tackling the real causes but by centralising licensing power in City Hall.
A pattern of accumulation
The licensing proposal fits a broader pattern. The Mayor expanded ULEZ across London in the face of opposition from five councils and a High Court challenge. The police and crime commissioner role was absorbed into the Mayor’s office. Planning call-in powers already allow City Hall to override borough decisions on major developments.
The government and City Hall have cited New York, Amsterdam and Sydney as precedents for strategic licensing. The comparisons do not hold up. New York’s Office of Nightlife, created in 2017, is a liaison and advocacy role with no override powers. Amsterdam’s “night mayor” mediates between venues and residents but cannot overrule local decisions. Sydney’s lockout laws, the closest parallel to top-down intervention, were imposed by the state government and devastated the night-time economy. More than half the city’s music venues closed in the following decade. The restrictions were finally repealed in full in January 2026 after the government acknowledged their “devastating impact.”
What Putney residents can do
The consultation is open until late March. The draft policy is available on the GLA website, where residents can submit their views.
Putney is classified as NT3 (“more than local significance”) in the London Plan’s night-time economy rankings, the lowest tier that appears on the list. Clapham Junction, also in Wandsworth with its own cumulative impact policy, is the higher-ranked NT2. Both areas would be affected.
Residents can also contact Wandsworth Council’s licensing team at licensing@wandsworth.gov.uk to ask what position the council is taking on the Mayor’s proposed powers.
London’s licensing system has real problems. Putney.news has documented them. But the answer is not to hand override powers to a mayor who has spent a decade accumulating authority with little accountability, and whom every borough leader in London is already trying to rein in.
