Jugglers perform with fire in Covent Garden [Covent Garden Street Performers Association]

• SO Westminster City Council are to review their licensing system for buskers and street performers, (Street performers fight ban in ‘sanitisation of Covent Garden’, November 24).

The 2021 system of dedicated sites around Oxford Street has never been enforced, so any wandering minstrel – or chancer – can bang out the theme from The Godfather for eternity.

The fact is, the city council are offering the public an opportunity to decide on the fate of buskers but are not accepting or enforcing the public concern over the growing number of aggressive professional beggars that plant themselves in Oxford Street and beyond.

These are not genuine homeless who do need our kindness and help. These professional beggars impersonating flower or balloon sellers, while buskers and street performers, who are now under scrutiny, offer their talent for public reward.

The council should act on the true blight of our high streets. Begging is illegal (since 1824) but playing guitar or swallowing swords is not.

JIM HILL
St George’s Fields, W2