On this side of the globe the "great" British summer is upon us.

It's a rare collection of weeks, occasionally months, when the English weather is pleasant enough to actually spend time outside.

Andre Spicer, a New Zealander with an Australian partner, wanted to use the long London days to encourage his five-year-old daughter's entrepreneurial side.

"We'd been to a school fete with lots of stalls and she thought, 'OK, I'd love to have a stall myself'," Mr Spicer said.

"First, she said she'd like to sell toys and I was hoping she'd declutter the house a little bit, but we ultimately settled on lemonade."

After a shopping trip, some online recipe searches and a 30-minute stint with a blender, the pair was ready to go.

They took four jugs of lemonade and a handmade sign to the end of their street.

A music festival was on nearby and dozens of people were streaming past.

"People smiled at us and within a minute we had our first customer," Mr Spicer said.

"We went through the lemonade quite quickly."

It was hardly a grand money-making exercise.

They were charging just 50p ($0.82) for a small cup and 1 pound ($1.64) for a big one.

But then the long arm of the law intervened.

"We were on the fourth jug, when we are approached by four enforcement officers from the local council," Mr Spicer said.

"I expected at the very worst they might say to me, 'OK, the law says this and unfortunately we're going to have to ask you to pack up and go home', which I would have been fine with.

"But they had a kind of legalistic script that they had to read through and then they gave us a fine of 150 pounds ($246) for operating without a permit."

The fine was later overturned after the story made headlines. ( Supplied )

The five-year-old burst into tears, assuming she had done something wrong, and the pair was forced to pack up and go home.

They watched a movie, calmed down and thought about what had happened.

"Perhaps I should have known some sort of permit was required, but we certainly didn't pose any sort of hazard," Mr Spicer explained.

"I then sent a tweet to the council and thought, 'I wonder if this has happened to other parents', so I wrote an opinion piece for a newspaper which has now triggered a bit of a media storm."

Andre Spicer, a professor of organisational behaviour, said the fine had become an interesting case study. ( ABC News: James Glenday )

Saga triggers broader debate

Mr Spicer is a professor of organisational behaviour at the CASS business school in London and has spent a fair chunk of his life trying to uncover why very clever people do very stupid things at work, largely by following rules or accepted norms.

The lemonade fine had become an interesting case study.

"Councils in the UK have had their funding cut back and they have to make money and they are trying to make money through fines," he said.

"Essentially they are applying the exact letter of the law without thinking about it a bit, [not] using what we might call common sense.

"I just wanted to say to [the officer], 'Think about what you are doing'.

"I doubt this would happen in Australia or New Zealand."

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As soon as the story hit the headlines, Tower Hamlets Council apologised and cancelled the fine.

"We expect our enforcement officers to show common sense and to use their powers sensibly," a spokesperson said.

"This clearly did not happen."

But the saga has triggered a broader debate in the media.

Some have claimed the lemonade fine is an example of Britain's love of regulation. Others see it as consequence of years of budget austerity or, conversely, the sign of a bloated bureaucracy intent on attacking entrepreneurial thinking.

Mr Spicer had a somewhat different take.

He said he worried children were now "too closely monitored, controlled and supervised".

"There are good intentions and reasons for many of the rules we have, we have to keep children safe … but I worry we are supervising some of the joy out of childhood," he said.

Plans for another pop-up lemonade stall are currently on hold.

Even with the right permit, Mr Spicer said his daughter "doesn't think it's a good idea".

But he wanted to encourage other parents to get their children outside.

"As all childhood research tells us, often they learn through doing things and getting out there," he said.

"Doing something is often far better than any other kind of learning experience."