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Freedom of operation within the new system

' have a work's Christmas party booked at my local guild hall on 17 December. Am I right in thinking I just take my DPS with me after delegating to my deputy head, then use their premises licence until the end of their permitted hours, notifying the police of the event and hours that I intend to open?

ALots of questions here. The whole object of a premises licence was to allow sales to be made in accordance with it by anyone holding a personal licence. I assume from your letter that the guild hall holds such a licence, so you are entitled to move in and sell in your own right.

You do not need your own DPS, in fact. There should be one for the hall itself, if it is licensed. Your DPS is only relevant to your own premises, not outside events.

As far as the evening in question is concerned, if you are going to attend the event, you can leave your DPS back at the pub and take other staff with you (as long as you hold a personal licence, which I assume you do).

There is technically no requirement to notify the police at all. This is not a Temporary Event Notice. The hall already has a licence that has specified hours on it, and you can serve within or up to those hours without requiring any additional permission or making any other notification. The police have no power of veto, and it is only if there is some form of condition on the guild hall licence or on the event contract which requires organisers to notify the police in advance that you need to let them know.

Children and pub curfews

's it now the law that children are not allowed in any part of a pub after 9pm? A colleague has reported that she was politely told in another pub that her children aged 15 and seven would have to leave the premises before that time, because it was the new law. She has been using it for some time with her kids. What has happened?

A There has not been a specific change in the law in this respect, and there must be some other explanation for the sudden refusal.

Under the old law a children's certificate, which allowed youngsters under 14 to be in the bar during permitted hours, could be curfewed by the justices until 9pm. But that only applied to the bar area, not to the whole pub.

Under the new law, there is a presumption that accompanied youngsters under 16 will be allowed in any part of the pub, unless there are specific issues concerning protection of children from harm (eg, an adult environment or adult entertainment).

Certainly, there is no specific curfew set into the law, and it does seem as if in this instance something has happened to make the situation more strict than it was before.

Possibly the police have insisted on a curfew condition for reasons of their own, and the licensee has gone along with it in order to gain other concessions on the licence.

The best thing to do is to check the licence summary. This should tell you whether there are any restrictions regarding children on the licence itself. If there are none, then it could be that the licensees has imposed it for the benefit of his other customers (which he is quite entitled to do).

It is not open to the local council to impose a standard condition of this type on pub licences, so it is unlikely to be a council decision.