Legal advice: Permitted Temporary Activities (Notices)

By Rebecca Caws of thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.​

On November 8, 2005, the Licensing Act 2003 (Permitted Temporary Activities) (Notices) regulations give the forms to be used for temporary events notices given by premises under section 100 of the Licensing Act 2003 and the prescribed matters and information to be contained in such notices.

The notice, if completed by hand, should be written legibly in black ink using block capitals. Two copies of the notice need to be sent to the relevant licensing authority and an additional copy must be sent to the chief officer of police for the area in which the premises are situated.

The licensing authority will then endorse one of the two copies and return it to you as an acknowledgement of receipt.

The regulations also give the form of acknowledgement of the receipt by a licensing authority of a temporary event notice.

In addition, the Regulations provide the form to be used for counter notices given by licensing authorities under section 107 of the 2003 Act, and the manner in which a counter notice must be given to the premises user.

In general, only the police may intervene on crime prevention grounds to prevent the occurrence of an event at which permitted temporary activities are to take place or to agree a modification of the arrangements for such an event.

However, the licensing authority may intervene of its own volition by issuing a counter notice if the first, second and fourth of the limits set out below would be exceeded. If any of the limits below are breached or if a counter notice has been issued, any licensable activities taking place would be unauthorised and the premises user would be liable to prosecution. The limitations apply to:

• The number of times a person (the premises user) may give a temporary event notice (50 times per year for a personal licence holder and five times a year for other people);
• The number of times a temporary event notice may be given in respect of any particular premises (12 times in a calendar year);
• The length of time a temporary event may last for these
  purposes (96 hours);
• The maximum aggregate duration of the periods covered by temporary event notices at any individual premises (15 days per calendar year); and
• The scale of the event in terms of the maximum number of people attending at any one time (a maximum of 499).