The Night Time Industries Association is urging the Government to strengthen protection for culturally significant venues, and to recognise the living culture those buildings sustain, after ministers responded to a House of Commons inquiry into built heritage.
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report, Protecting built heritage, found gaps in protection for buildings valued for their cultural and social importance, including nightclubs, grassroots music venues and LGBTQ+ spaces. Drawing on evidence from NTIA chief executive Michael Kill, MPs recommended processes to identify and protect those spaces alongside buildings of architectural significance.
The report was published in July, after an inquiry lasting more than 18 months. On 16 October the Committee published the Government’s response. Ministers rejected the suggestion that reuse should always take priority over new construction, and ruled out a specific scheme to turn vacant historic buildings into homes.
MPs had called for a “reuse first” approach, and for a dedicated heritage to housing scheme that could help meet a large share of the Government’s 1.5 million homes target. The Committee also pointed to international examples, including Italy’s €1 homes scheme. In the same announcement, committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage said the reply offered “very little tangible detail” on how built heritage would actually be safeguarded.
The NTIA argues that protecting a building’s exterior is not enough. It wants intangible cultural assets recognised as well: the music, creative practices, traditions, community knowledge and collective memories tied to a venue. Its case is that a place can keep its facade and still lose the culture created inside it.
Kill said the Committee was right to demand greater ambition, and that the Government’s response “falls short of the practical action needed to secure the future of our built and cultural heritage.”
“For the night time economy, this is about the clubs, grassroots music venues and LGBTQ+ spaces where generations have built communities, launched careers and shaped British culture,” he said. “Protecting that heritage means protecting the cultural activity within these buildings, alongside the buildings themselves.”
He said musical movements, DJ and performance traditions, community histories, creative skills and knowledge passed between generations are “living expressions of our cultural identity”, and that their significance should carry weight when a venue’s future is decided.
“You can preserve a façade and still erase a place’s cultural identity,” Kill said. “If the community is displaced, the music stops and the venue’s cultural purpose disappears, retaining the building alone will not protect that heritage.”
The association wants ministers to set out how cultural and social significance will count for more in planning decisions, how funding will become accessible to independent operators, and how communities can step in before valued spaces are lost. That includes practical support for communities to identify and document intangible heritage, and to keep it alive.
Kill also said bringing vacant historic buildings back into use deserves serious support, including for cultural and night time uses. Where housing is built alongside established venues, he said developments must manage their impact, including sound insulation, so regeneration does not push out existing cultural life.
The warning lands against a sharp contraction in late night provision. The NTIA has previously said a quarter of UK towns have lost all their nightclubs, and that one in six have no late night venues left, figures reported by the BBC as the association described a “national cultural crisis”.
“We need clear commitments, named responsibility and a timetable for delivery,” Kill said. “Every venue lost risks taking an irreplaceable part of our cultural identity with it. Government must act while there is still something to protect.”
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