Few familiar with Westminster City Council will be surprised by its draft proposal to refuse licenses for new pubs and nightclubs unless they ban standing up while having a pint – an activity it calls ‘vertical drinking’. After all, when it comes to petty killjoy regulations, this council has form.

Take its attitude to takeaway pizza. After a blurry night out, I usually sit on the floor, in between the sofa and coffee table, in a relaxed heap, my face as close to the hot, greasy and preferably cheesy food as possible. Coupled with a can of cold Diet Coke, it’s the perfect end to a night out. In the morning, I am immeasurably grateful to myself for the carbs and fluid consumed in this state of nirvana.

Westminster council have found a way to spoil even this in Soho. The pizza restaurant ICCO on Greek Street has a limitation on its licence that dictates it may not sell pizza for takeaway after 11pm. The chain operates two other units, both outside of Westminster’s boundaries, that have no similar restrictions.

Shrief Kamel, creative director at ICCO, has said this causes no end of grief for his staff when the clock strikes 11. Customers line up hoping for a late-night snack, and his embarrassed team has to inform them that there is a ban on boxes. Tourists end their night in London on a sour note, and incredulous residents point to their nearby flats saying, ‘but I live just there’.

On the one night a month that it does operate as a takeaway after 11pm, it has to apply a week in advance and pay a fee for a ‘temporary event notice’. On other evenings, Shrief has encountered licensing officers attending the restaurant to search through bins, checking for timestamps showing takeaway pizza sold after 11pm (always in vain). Customers who do decide to eat in at the few tables the restaurant has aren’t even allowed to take leftovers with them if they depart after 11.

Like other restrictions on venues operating in Soho, the reason cited by the council for this strange ban is the dreaded ‘cumulative impact assessment’ (CIA). This is the method that the council employs to work out what effect a concentration of venues has on the ‘licensing objectives’ handed down to them by the 2003 Licensing Act. Although the Licensing Act isn’t something the council has the power to change, the act does not require the council to maintain use of the CIA (Camden council recently ditched its CIA).

The CIA is the same mechanism that Westminster council used in its draft policy to ban ‘vertical drinking’ in pubs. The policy, which is currently out for consultation, states that there will be a standard presumption to refuse all applications for any new pub or club. However, if space for ‘vertical drinking’ is removed, then the council will consider awarding a licence.

Several Westminster councillors have taken to social media to declare themselves proud ‘vertical’ drinkers, and have consistently denied the claim that this policy amounts to a ban on standing. However, the policy reveals the council’s aversion to ‘alcohol-led’ activities, and it has yet to lay out any substance as to what the policy actually intends. Moving past the faintly comical idea of a nightclub where customers must remain seated, it seems the council has not considered what effect this paragraph would have on prospective publicans. If the intention is really isn’t to ‘reduce the extent of, or to remove opportunities for’ standing in the pub, then why include the passage at all?

Westminster council seems incapable of acknowledging the positive contribution made by Soho’s venues to the reputation of London, the social lives of residents and visitors, or the many jobs they create. Not to mention the revenue these businesses generate for the council. Hospitality is viewed in this area, and I suspect increasingly across the country, as a problem to be managed, not an industry to be encouraged and celebrated.

The licensing officers told me earlier in the summer that they would like more people to engage with the consultation process and to bring their questions and concerns. Well, these are our questions and concerns.

One of the stated objectives of the draft policy is to help reduce social isolation. The British pub must be at the centre of that mission, and the post-night-out debrief over an open pizza box is a close second. The council must change its policy: let people stand, and let them have boxes for crying out loud.

Lucy Rogers is the head of community at Looking for Growth, the political movement to end decline and save Britain.