Music Venue Trust has called on the UK Government to protect grassroots music venues from widespread closures ahead of 21 June 2021.

CEO of Music Venue Trust (MVT) Mark Davyd said in a statement: “Dependent on public health factors, and the government’s approach to them, this announcement could finally kickstart the process of reviving live music… we also have to acknowledge that the announcement runs an equal risk of undoing 16 months of work by tens of thousands of people to Save Our Venues unless the government carefully manages any decision to delay reopening. Failure to take immediate action to support the sector could tip many hundreds of grassroots music venues into the abyss.”

Calling for provisions to be put in place to protect and support grassroots music venues, the CEO said: “This is not an exaggeration; with no funding in place to mitigate any delay in reopening we will see mass evictions and foreclosures by landlords and creditors who ran out of patience a long time ago. The risk of business closures, widespread redundancies and the decimation of our sector is as real now as it was in April 2020.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) called on MVT to collect data from more than 900 venues across the UK to assess the impact if step four in the roadmap out of lockdown did not proceed. They concluded that there would be immediate financial challenges, and 93% of grassroots venues (879) face “likely eviction resulting in the closure of the business.” Davydd told TheTicketingBusiness: “If the Government decides on a delay on the basis of evidence about the risk to public health we would like to see and review that evidence, especially the evidence from the Social Distancing Review and the Events Research Programme, both of which were due to be published before the end of May and neither of which have been made available.”

Music Venue Trust’s Save Our Venues Campaign has so far raised over £1million of their £1.7million goal they have estimated it will take to save the remaining venues on their ‘Red List.’ The impact of the MVT’s work and the Save Our Venues campaign has been impactful, as in March last year, over 500 venues were at risk, and now only a handful remain; however this is feared to be in jeopardy should venues not be allowed to reopen on 21 June 2021.