Premises Licence Summary on Display

Q. I have my Premises Licence Summary displayed in a glass case along with some Health and Safety and Employers Liability Insurance Certificates. The Summary is easily visible although it is behind the bar. A customer and fellow Licensee recently told me that this was against the law. I thought a Licence Summary only had to be ‘prominently displayed’?

A. You don’t say how many pages there are to your Licence Summary, but I am assuming there are more than one, and that only the front page is displayed in the glass case.

If this is true, then you are probably not strictly complying with the legislation, as one of the purposes of this rule is to allow Enforcement Officers if necessary to easily check your permissions. If they have to ask for access to get behind the bar or to unlock the glass case, or both, to view the whole Summary then this rather undermines the purpose of it being prominently displayed. If you have room, or the Summary isn’t too long, try and display each page individually in a place where they can be easily read.

Alternatively staple the pages together so that they can be flicked through without a Police or Licensing Officer needing to request a key or gain access behind the bar. I should add that most authorities, as long as they can see the Summary displayed, don’t take such a strict view.