Dealing with TENs for the festive period

If you are considering holding special events, for example on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, or just want to look to maximise trade on these days by extending your hours, here are some key points to consider:

• Check your premises licence carefully to see if your standard hours are sufficient for what you would like to do (Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve fall on a Monday this year)
• If they do not then there may be ‘non-standard’ timings specified on your licence that extend the hours you could trade on specific days (for example, an additional hour on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve)
• If there are ‘non-standard’ timings then make sure that these extend your hours for all of the licensable activities that you wish to operate and for the duration of your event – e.g. they may only extend alcohol and not regulated entertainment.

If, after checking , you do not have the desired hours or activities permitted then you have the option to issue temporary event notices (TENs) to authorise additional hours or activities as required for your desired dates.

If you are planning on issuing TENs then I suggest the following to try to ensure the application is processed smoothly and your proposed event can go ahead:

• Check your TENs allowance and plan your events carefully to ensure that you have enough cover – your premises can have up to 15 TENs in a calendar year and these can cover no more than 21 days in total. Each event can last up to a maximum of seven days and there must be a minimum period of 24 hours between each TEN. If you don’t hold a personal licence, you can only issue ­five TENs.
• Get your applications submitted early – this gives you the peace of mind of knowing that the TEN is granted well in advance of the event and ensures that you don’t miss a deadline. A standard TEN should be submitted to the authorities with at least 10 working days’ notice (not including day of receipt by the authorities or the day of the event).

If the event you are planning is out of the ordinary for your style of operation or is unusual in any way then you may wish to consider pre-consulting with the authorities prior to submission of any TEN to ensure that they have no concerns and will not object to your proposal.