Club premises certificate or premises licence? Licensing a private members' club

The Licensing Act 2003 offers two ways to authorise the supply of alcohol and regulated entertainment. A premises licence under Part 3 is the familiar route, used by pubs, restaurants and hotels. A club premises certificate under Part 4 is available only to a body that meets the statutory definition of a qualifying club.

The distinction matters commercially. A club premises certificate is generally cheaper, does not require a designated premises supervisor, and does not require anyone on site to hold a personal licence. It also narrows the circumstances in which a constable may enter the premises. The trade-off is that it does not permit sales to the general public.

Section 62 sets out the general conditions. All of them must be met, and in practice the first is where clubs most often come unstuck:

• Under the club's rules, a person may not be admitted to membership, or to the privileges of membership, without an interval of at least two days between their nomination or application and their admission.
• The club is established and conducted in good faith as a club.
• The club has at least 25 members.
• Alcohol is not supplied to members on the premises otherwise than by or on behalf of the club.

Section 63 tells the licensing authority what to weigh when testing good faith: the arrangements for members to control the purchase and supply of alcohol, the club's freedom from outside influence, the accuracy of its accounts and their availability to members, the nature of the premises, and the benefits members actually receive.

Where a club supplies alcohol, section 64 adds a further requirement: the purchase and supply of alcohol must be managed by a committee of members aged eighteen or over, elected by the members.

The two-day interval is the rule most often broken, and usually without anyone noticing. A club that lets a visitor sign up at the door and buy a drink the same evening is not operating as a qualifying club at that moment, whatever its certificate says. The same applies to a membership platform that approves applications automatically.

This is worth auditing if your sign-up flow has been redesigned since the certificate was granted. Digital onboarding built for conversion tends to remove exactly the friction the statute requires.

A club premises certificate covers the supply of alcohol to members and the sale of alcohol to a guest of a member for consumption on the premises, provided the club rules permit it. What it does not cover is selling to the public.

The practical questions are therefore about who is actually in the room. A ticketed event promoted to non-members, a space hired out to an external organiser, or a restaurant open to walk-ins will usually fall outside the certificate. Clubs in that position either need a premises licence, or need to run those events under a temporary event notice.

A club owned by an individual or a company and run for that owner's profit is a proprietary club. Members are customers rather than collective owners, so the good-faith and members'-control conditions are not satisfied and a club premises certificate is not available. A proprietary club needs a premises licence, with a designated premises supervisor who holds a personal licence.

This catches a good number of modern members' clubs, particularly those structured as companies with investors. Calling the offering a membership does not make the operator a qualifying club.

A temporary event notice authorises licensable activities at a one-off event without varying the underlying licence. The headline limits are fewer than 500 people at any one time, including staff, and a maximum duration of 168 hours. There are annual caps on how many notices may be given for a single premises, and the standard notice period is ten working days, with a shorter late-notice route that carries fewer protections.

Notices are a sensible tool for an occasional open evening. They are not a substitute for the right licence if non-member trading is becoming a regular part of the business.

• Do the written rules still contain the two-day interval, and does the sign-up process actually apply it?
• Is the alcohol committee properly elected, and are its members over eighteen?
• Are annual accounts prepared and genuinely available to members?
• Does any regular event admit people who are neither members nor guests of members?
• Does the certificate cover the hours and activities you now trade, including recorded music and late openings?

Most licensing problems at members' clubs are not dramatic. They are the slow drift between what the rules say and what the door actually does.