Legislation will introduce charges for playing recorded music in public venues from 2011, but charities are given an extra year to prepare The Government has decided charities will no longer be exempt from paying one of the two licensing bodies if they play recorded music in their own premises. Charity shops and community groups will have to pay for licences to play music from January 2012 under plans that are due to come into force at the beginning of next year. An amendment to music licensing law, which means charities and other not-for-profit groups will lose their exemption from the royalty fees, was placed before Parliament last month. The amendment says public venues, including those used by charities and not-for-profit groups, will need licences from the licensing authority Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) in order to play music from records, CDs, the radio or television. The PPL and the Performing Right Society for Music (PRS) distribute royalties on behalf of composers, lyricists, music publishers, record companies and musicians. While charities and not-for-profit organisations have always had to pay licensing body PRS for Music, the Government has now proposed they should also pay a fee to PPL, which collects royalties on behalf of performers and record companies. The law will be introduced on 1 January 2011, but charity shops and some other institutions will be exempt from the fees for the first year. A statement from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said a charge of �40 a year would apply to 60 per cent of the buildings where voluntary groups met and that most charity shops would pay �54 per year. Politicians have estimated that the measure could cost the sector �20m a year. PRS for Music and PPL have agreed to make one joint charge to charities instead of issuing two separate bills. A spokesman for the IPO confirmed that the charge would apply to each shop, so charities with chains of shops would have to pay for every branch. He said larger shops would pay more than small shops. The plans are part of a statutory instrument that was placed before Parliament on the 9th November and is due to be passed after 40 days. The plans are a 'negative instrument', meaning they can become law without a debate or a vote in Parliament, although either parliamentary house can pass a resolution to annul them. Nick Hurd, the Minister for Civil Society, said: "We have worked hard to ensure that charities, particularly small organisations and charity shops, get extra protection and that the impact of any changes is minimised. "It will be difficult to satisfy everyone but we have achieved a fairer balance between the need to reward musicians for their work and the need to protect charities from excessive costs and additional bureaucracy." At present a lot of the detail appears to be slightly vague as to how this will work and so the impact on local charities cannot be fully assessed. The rule change will affect people in a wide range of organisations, including for example, fundraising discos, tea dances, community drop-in sessions, volunteers sorting clothes in the back of charity shops while listening to music. Would it be fair for a local charity to pay, for example, the BBC licence fee and then have to pay on top of that to pulicly broadcast it to its staff and customers. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and the Association of Charity Shops are urging people to write to their local MP to ask them to support the campaign against the move. So far 103 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion in Parliament calling on the Government to maintain the existing arrangements.