In the modern world though the danger may be that people think they’ve got all the information they need from the headline alone.
A greater understanding of the full story will help publican’s planning and held sidestep potential compliance issues.
Let’s dive a little deeper into a few of the more high profile recent topics impacting licence holders.
Banning Labour MPs
In response to the seemingly endless financial attack on pubs many publicans banned Labour MPs from their establishments.
It is clear that with some restrictions landlords retain the right to ban people from their pubs.
Despite running a “public house” you do not have a duty to serve all members of the public. Joe Public has no ‘right’ to enter and drink in your pub and may do so only if they meet house rules which could include dress codes, minimum age restrictions and expected customer behaviour.
Publicans have the right to ask customers to leave and refuse future entry to anyone who does not meet those standards.
However, you must be careful to ensure that your reasons for the ban are not unlawful. Banning someone purely based on a protected characteristic such as gender, race, disability, sexual orientation or religion would be unlawful.
It will come as no surprise that being a Labour MP is not a protected characteristic as defined by the Equality Act 2010.
Banning the sale of non-alcoholic drinks to under 18’s
Currently the Licensing Act defines “alcohol” as being only drinks “of a strength not exceeding 0.5%”.
By extension any product that is 0.5% or below is excluded from all the restrictions of sale and consumption put in place by the Licensing Act. In essence anyone can buy them and anyone can drink them.
However “low alcohol” drinks of between 0.6% and 1.2%abv are classed as alcohol and so you need to be 18 years old to purchase or consume them.
The distinction is important and may provide challenges to publicans.
Imagine the scenario that a perfectly sober over 18-year-old comes to the bar and orders a pint of Guinness and a Guinness 0.0 (*other no alcohol products are available). There are no red flags and no reason to refuse the sale.
However, you then realise the adult is actually a parent accompanied by their child who looks to be aged around 15. Under the Licensing Act provided the adult drinks the pint with alcohol in it and the child drinks the zero there are no offences committed.
There is instant complexity for your staff who must be constantly vigilant to ensure that the parent and child don’t switch drinks. The Licensing Act contains a plethora of offences (some committed by the staff, some by the parent and some by the child) if the under 18-year-old drinks the alcohol pint.
Until or unless the Licensing Act is amended it is perfectly understandable and lawful that many publicans have a house rule preventing under 18’s from drinking no alcohol products.
Licensing Hours for the World Cup
The World Cup should (depending on the performance of the home nations) be a huge boost for those publicans who plan on showing the games in their pubs. The showing of a live tv broadcast is not itself a licensable activity but you must ensure you have the appropriate TV licensing in place.
Planning ahead is going to be easy for the group stages as the fixture schedule is known well in advance. England, Scotland (and Wales when they qualify) are 100% going to get through to knockout stages!
In anticipation of this the Government yesterday announced plans to extend licensing hours for the quarter final, semi-final and final if they involve one of the home nations.
If the game kicks off at 9pm (or earlier) then hours for pubs in England and Wales will be extended to 1am, hours will be extended to 2am if the game kicks off after 9pm but no later than 10pm.
Apparently, the Government are “exploring options to extend opening hours for other Home Nation games too”. Presumably this means there is the potential for similar extensions to be put in place for the two knockout rounds prior to the quarter final stage.
Hopefully we will not have to wait too long for clarity on that as publicans will have to be alert to the need to issue TENs if a home nation is playing in any match that kicks off after 10pm in any of the knockout rounds.
Potentially they may need to issue a TEN for a home nation’s game in the first two knock out rounds that may be outside the pub’s permitted hours.
The extension of hours for pubs will only ever apply to a game involving one of the home nations. If you are lucky enough to be the host for the Bradford chapter of the Portugal supporters club you will have to issue a TEN to cover any game they’re involved in that falls outside of your normal hours.
Mindful of the fact you are only permitted 15 TENs in a year and you might want to retain some for use at other points in 2026 there may be an alternative.
You could consider submitting a variation application to update the seasonal hours to your Premises Licence for the duration of this World Cup and any similar event in future years.
For completeness licensees in Scotland should keep an eye on the information starting to come from Licensing Boards on their intentions to relax licensing hours.
Crystal clear? Well, the exact details on the Government’s plans will follow in in due course so watch this space.
Digital ID
Remember last year’s announcement that by Christmas there would be a system of digital IDs for those under 18? Also remember the announcement that National ID cards would be implemented in some form?
Well, it seems that despite a U-turn on National ID cards the Government is ploughing ahead with digital ID albeit delayed from the original ambitious timeline.
The Government has expressed its regret that it missed its own deadline but is working on drafting the secondary legislation to update the mandatory licensing conditions which will permit licence holders to accept certain types of digital ID as proof of identity and age.
There is still much to be confirmed on the implementation of the new system but it appears as though at some point in 2026 publicans will begin to have the option of accepting digital ID.
Watch this space.
- Nick Landells is a legal executive at Poppleston Allen
