Testing extended opening hours at a licensed premises

Testing extended trading hours at a licensed premises

Now that we appear to be returning to some form of normality, many pubs, restaurants, clubs and other licensed businesses are looking at their options to try and increase trade. But is there a way a premises can test the water for trading hours without having to apply for a permanent variation to their licence?

Licensing|04 October 2021

Insight

Testing extended trading hours

You could try to extend your hours of trade beyond what is permitted on your premises licence on a temporary basis by lodging a Temporary Event Notice (TEN) with your local authority.

The key points to note regarding TENs include:

You can have up to 15 TENs per year covering a total of 21 days (with one event being no more than 7 days);
If you’re organising separate but consecutive events, there must be at least a 24-hour gap between them;
It can be for no more than 499 people (including staff and performers;
You must apply for a TEN at least 10 clear working days before your event, which does not include the date of the event or the day the authority receives the application;
You must ensure that the Police and Environmental Health receive a copy of your TEN and you pay the Licensing Authority the notice fee of £21

Should no objections be received from the Police or Environmental Health to you extending trading hours, then this can give an indication of your chances of success should you decide to apply to change your premises licence on a permanent basis. Using TENs this way can allow you to build a body of evidence to show that you have already traded to the proposed later hours through the use of TENs without any issues.

However, one thing to bear in mind with using this process to test the water is that local residents are not consulted on TENs. If you are located near residents, then they may accept you using TENs on the odd occasion for extended hours, but they may think differently about you having a permanent extension to your licence. Furthermore, should you decide to apply to extend your trading hours permanently, then local residents can contact the Licensing Authority to object to your proposals which could end up with it being refused.

There is no guarantee, that should you use TENs to evidence that you can trade beyond your existing permitted hours, that any application to make this a permanent change will be granted. There are various factors to consider with this approach and we would advise you to seek legal advice in the first instance.

Testing extended trading hours at a licensed premises

Testing extended trading hours

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