Temporary Event Notices Explained: The £21 Licence That Saves Events

There's a £21 piece of paper that turns a village hall into a bar, a field into a festival, and your mobile bar business into something that can legally trade almost anywhere. It's called a Temporary Event Notice, it's the most useful licence most vendors have never properly understood. Getting it wrong cancels events. Ten minutes here saves that phone call.

What a TEN actually is

A Temporary Event Notice lets you carry out "licensable activities" at a place that doesn't have a premises licence covering them. For vendors that overwhelmingly means one thing: selling alcohol. Serving drinks at a wedding in a barn, running a pop-up bar at a charity do, selling cans at a one-off street party. The gov.uk rules are refreshingly specific, and the numbers are worth knowing cold:

• £21: the fee, paid to the local council where the event happens.
• Fewer than 500 people: at all times. That count includes you and your staff.
• 168 hours: the maximum length of one event, which is a full week.
• 10 clear working days: the minimum notice for a standard TEN. Clear working days, so weekends and the day you apply don't count. In practice, think three weeks ahead minimum.

The limits that catch people

TENs are rationed. The rationing works on two axes at once. Per person: you can give up to 5 TENs a year, rising to 50 a year if you hold a personal licence. Per premises: a single location can host up to 15 TENs a year, capped at 21 total event days.

Both limits bite in real life. A busy mobile bar without a personal licence burns through 5 TENs by June. And that lovely barn venue everyone books? If other suppliers have already used its 15, your event is the one that can't happen, through nobody's fault but the calendar's. Always ask the venue how many TENs have gone in this year before you promise a bar. It's one question, and it's saved more than one wedding.

If you're serving alcohol regularly, the maths points one way: get a personal licence. It lifts you from 5 notices a year to 50, it's a one-off qualification, and it signals to councils and venues that you know what you're doing.

Missed the deadline?

There's a late TEN, for notices given between 9 and 5 clear working days before the event. You get up to 2 a year without a personal licence, 10 with one. The difference that matters: a late TEN that gets an objection from police or environmental health is simply dead. No hearing, no appeal, no bar. Standard TENs at least get a hearing. Treat late TENs as an emergency tool, not a workflow.

Where mobile bars get caught out

• Counting wrong: the 500 cap includes staff, performers and the couple. A 480-guest wedding with a 25-person crew is over the limit.
• The free bar myth: if alcohol is included in a ticket price or package, that's still a sale in licensing terms. "It's free at the point of serving" has ended badly at hearings.
• Wrong council: the TEN goes to the council where the event happens, not where your business lives. Rural venues sit in surprising districts.
• Assuming the venue's covered: plenty of barns, marquee fields and village halls have no premises licence at all. Never assume. Ask, then check the paperwork.

One more thing worth saying: a TEN covers the event, not your competence. Councils expect the person running the bar to understand licensing objectives, age checks and refusal logs, which is what our mobile bar licensing guide walks through properly.

£21, three weeks' notice, count your allowance, ask the venue about theirs. That's the whole discipline, and it's the difference between a bar that trades all season and a very awkward call to a couple three days before their wedding. Put the TEN question in your booking checklist this week. Sorted.