Independent music venues may be small, but they have a massive impact in generating and sustaining England's musical ecosystem. Providing the essential platform at the beginning of a career pipeline, it's in these spaces that upcoming artists not only gain experience, but exposure: a chance to be recognised and establish a following. Simultaneously, they also provide a space for locals to unwind and socialise, becoming part of the glue that binds a community together, generating it's spirit.
They're cultural cooking pots, a necessity that have remained overlooked for too long. Burnham's 20% cut is a refreshing shift in attention, and signifies a new investment into the countries' much-needed small venues.
However, from Roadhouse's closure in Manchester in 2015, to Corsica Studios in London this year, across the country these venues have been dropping like flies for over a decade now; and when current relief guidelines explicitly exclude nightclubs, the potential reach of this new measure remains ambiguous. Already plunged into a deeply unstable position, will Burnham's relief plans even touch the sides?
To get a better idea about how this new government measure could impact our very own venues in the North East, I got in touch with Ross Lewis, production manager at The Cluny. Full of charm and hosting an array of talented artists, the old, industrial building in the heart of the Ouseburn Valley is a landmark within the North East's music scene.
Q Why are smaller, independent venues in Newcastle like yours important? For artists? For the music scene? For the community?
RL For artists, we're the first rung — and often the second and third. Nobody walks straight onto an arena stage; they learn their craft in rooms like ours, in front of 100 people, working out who they are. Every headliner you can name played a room like The Cluny first. Lose the grassroots and you don't just lose small gigs — you break the pipeline that feeds the whole industry, and a few years down the line the big venues have nothing to sell.
For the scene, we're the connective tissue. We're where promoters, sound engineers, bookers and bands all cut their teeth, and where a local act can share a bill with a touring band and actually get seen. That ecosystem doesn't exist without physical rooms to hold it.
And for the community, a venue is one of the last genuinely shared, non-transactional spaces left — somewhere you go to feel something in a room full of strangers. In a region like ours, with the cultural history the North East has, that matters even more. This has always been a place that makes its own culture rather than importing it, and independent venues are where that still happens.
Q Do you think Andy Burnham's 20% business rates cut will benefit local venues in Newcastle?
RL Any reduction in a fixed cost is welcome, and I don't want to be churlish about it — it's a meaningful signal that government finally sees venues as worth protecting rather than just taxing. For a lot of Newcastle venues that qualify, it'll take some genuine pressure off.
But I'd be honest about the scale of it. Twenty per cent off business rates is one line on a very long list of costs, and it doesn't touch the biggest pressures — energy, wages, VAT. It's a helpful lever; it isn't a rescue. The venues most at risk are often the ones where a rates cut, welcome as it is, won't be the thing that decides whether they make it through the year. So yes, it'll benefit venues here — but let's not oversell what it can do on its own.
Q How do you think it will benefit your venue specifically?
RL We should qualify — we're a live music venue in the truest sense of the definition; that's what the building is for — so we'd expect to see the benefit when it comes in. In cash terms it's a few thousand pounds a year, which for us isn't trivial. That can be the difference between being able to take a chance on an emerging act and playing it safe. Every pound we're not handing over in fixed costs is a pound that can go back into programming, into paying artists properly, into keeping ticket prices accessible. So it helps — but it helps at the margins, and the margins are exactly where we live.
Q Do you think it will genuinely have a positive impact? Or do you have concerns?
RL Both, and I don't think those cancel out. It's a genuine positive — it's real money, it's a change of tone after a decade of venues being treated as an afterthought, and momentum matters. My concern is that a rates cut treats a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that the whole grassroots model is running at a structural loss, and no single relief fixes that.
I'd want to see it as a first step towards proper structural support — a serious look at VAT for hospitality, a proper arena-to-grassroots ticket levy so the top of the industry reinvests in the bottom, real help on energy. If the 20% is the start of that conversation, brilliant. If it's the end of it — if it lets anyone say "we've dealt with venues now" — then it'll have done nearly as much harm as good.
Q In current eligibility guidelines for business rates relief, nightclubs have been specifically excluded. Subsequently, there's been concern over eligibility for this 20% cut too. Is this something you're concerned about?
RL Yes, on two levels. First, on principle: the night-time economy is one ecosystem, and carving nightclubs out of it is a false distinction. A grassroots electronic or club space is doing exactly the same cultural work we are — developing artists, holding a community, keeping a scene alive — and facing exactly the same costs. We've lost more than a third of the country's nightclubs already; excluding the survivors from relief while their rates keep climbing is a strange way to protect the sector.
Second, more practically, these definitions are a lottery. Whether you count as a "live music venue" or a "nightclub" can come down to how a local authority reads your licence and your programming — and venues like ours don't fit neatly in one box. Plenty of grassroots spaces do both. So an exclusion aimed at nightclubs can catch venues that were never the intended target. That's a real risk, and it's the kind of detail that decides whether a policy actually reaches the people it's meant to.
Q Do you think nightclubs should be given equal access to this relief?
RL Yes — unequivocally. If the argument for the relief is that these spaces are culturally valuable, community anchors and under pressure, then nightclubs meet every part of that test. Electronic and club culture is one of the things this country genuinely leads the world in, and it's disproportionately where young people and working-class communities have built their own scenes. To tell that sector it's less deserving of protection than a pub is a value judgement I don't think stands up. Equal pressure should mean equal support.
Q Do you have any other opinions on the 20% business rates cut?
RL A couple of things. One, I'd love to see this paired with real regional thinking. National schemes are administered locally, and there's scope for our mayoral authority and councils to use their discretion to back the venues the national definition misses. I'd like the North East to be ambitious about that, rather than just passing the money through.
Two, the deeper point: for decades the wealth and the cultural investment in this country have pooled in one corner of it, and regions like ours have been left to sustain a remarkable amount of culture on very little. A rates cut is welcome, but the real prize is treating grassroots music as infrastructure — something you invest in because it produces value, the way you'd fund a library or a sports pitch — rather than as a struggling small business you occasionally throw a lifeline to. Get that mindset right and the rest follows. That's the conversation I actually want to have.
So, at first glance, the cut seems great. Objectively, the money and acknowledgement shows Andy Burnham is throwing support to the venues that, despite being so essential and invaluable to the country's music scene, have remained neglected. It's providing a level of financial relief and much-needed attention.
However, considering how precarious the position of The Cluny is, like many other small music venues across the country, reading between the lines the impact of the 20% remains dangerously limited. Especially for venues in the North East, a region thats music scene has consistently been disregarded in favour of those concentrated in the South.
That being said, Andy Burnham has said himself, "What we’re announcing [is] just the start as we work to bring back hope across the country". Let's hope he holds himself accountable to that. Let's hope his DJ sets in Manchester aren't just a publicity ploy, and this enthusiasm for the music scene doesn't wane.
If the cut is going to have a felt impact, this 20% must remain the first step in the journey, rather than the last. It must be a signification of what's to come, a sign that the government is intent on tackling the unstable, neglected position that independent music venues have been fixed at for too long in the wider framework of the music industry.