I GUESS most people would agree that the law can be a strange beast. Laws by themselves are sometimes neither good or bad, it is how they are applied by the various enforcement agencies that determine how workable they are.

Some years ago when the legislation came in about doormen needing to be qualified and trained it appeared at first that my volunteer stewards at Huntingdon Hall were going to be classified as doormen and would therefore need to undergo courses in how to remove drunken and violent customers without getting into a punch up.

Common sense prevailed and the volunteers’ jobs were reclassified.

We still keep a careful eye on our Sunday afternoon classical audience though! (n.b.

that was a joke, please don’t write in!) Now, we are faced with new legislation in the entertainment industry relating to control of noise at work. The law has been around for over two years but has only just been applied to entertainment venues. It is going to be hard and complex to try to comply with the law because the greatest dangers are probably going to come in other sorts of venues. For example, somebody behind the bar in a club might be subjected to very loud music for a long period of time.

Quite how we are going to anticipate how loud each concert might be at the hall and the Swan and what measures we will have to put into force remains to be seen. You might be interested to know that the law only applies to staff and volunteers though and not the audience. You’re allowed to make yourself deaf whenever you want!

* Chris Jaeger is chief executive of Worcester Live.