Amid all the sprucing up and organising and ordering ahead for the Festive Season, it’s important to remember – and plan for – the big changes to TENs which are almost on us.
Temporary Events Notices (TENs) are a crucial part of the licensing and hospitality sector – known to all permanent alcohol licence holders and even those who make only the occasional application for a drinks licence for a community event. You simply can’t operate outside your normal licensing hours without a TEN (unless you want to face a huge fine, as opposed to the few pounds an application to the licensing authority will cost you).
As part of its attempts to help sustain the hospitality sector, the Government introduced temporary TENs measures during the Covid pandemic, permitting a greater number of applications per premises or per licence-holder each year to allow extended bar hours and regulated entertainment beyond the norm.
But those temporary measure come to an end at midnight on December 31st this year, when they will revert to these pre-pandemic levels:
What this means is that licence-holders will have to plan more carefully for special events and take a year-long view. It’s no good running regular late-night events through the year and discovering you’ve run out of TENs on December 1.
It also means that anyone planning an out-of-normal-hours event over the next month will have to move fast. A standard TEN application must be received at least 10 days before the start of the event (not including the day the notice is lodged or the starting date of the event). A late TEN application can be lodged between nine and five days before an event, but if there are any objections, the event cannot proceed. TENs applications received less than five days before the due start date are invalid and any event cannot go ahead.
For those suddenly flying into a panic and searching desperately for a TENs application form, here’s a guide to cut-off application dates for Christmas and New Year:
Boxing Day
Standard TEN by December 8th
Late TEN by December 15th
Christmas Day
Standard TEN by December 8th
Late TEN by December 15th
Boxing Day
Standard TEN by December 8th
Late TEN by December 15th
New Years Eve
Standard TEN by December 13th
Late TEN by December 20th
New Year's Day
Standard TEN by December 13th
Late TEN by December 20th
(Late TEN applications for New Year’s Eve are unlikely to be accepted).