Somebody on your committee wants to run a quiz night with a licensed bar. A touring club is booking your field for a rally and asking if there will be music on the Saturday. A local band has offered to play for a summer weekend and you quite fancy the idea of a proper little festival feel for your guests. Before you say yes, there is a question worth answering properly: does this need a temporary event notice, commonly shortened to a TEN, and what happens if you run the event without one? It catches out more UK campsite owners than you would think, usually because nobody tells them the rules apply to a farm field with forty pitches just as much as they apply to a village hall.

Here is what a temporary event notice actually covers, when your site needs one, and how to apply for one without losing a fortnight to paperwork.

What a temporary event notice actually is

A temporary event notice sits under the Licensing Act 2003 in England and Wales, and it is the mechanism that lets you run a one off event involving a licensable activity without holding a full premises licence. The licensable activities that matter to most campsites are the sale of alcohol, the provision of regulated entertainment such as live or recorded music, dancing or a big screen showing a film, and the supply of late night refreshment after 11pm. If your event includes any of those and your site does not already hold a premises licence that covers it, a TEN is very likely the route you need.

The notice is given to your local authority's licensing team, not applied for in the way you might apply for planning permission. You are telling them the event is happening and giving them a chance to object, rather than asking permission in the traditional sense, although in practice it works much the same way from your point of view.

When you actually need one

It is easy to either worry about this too much or not enough, so it helps to think about it in plain terms. You are likely to need a TEN if you are:

You are less likely to need one for a low key evening where guests bring their own drinks around a fire pit, an acoustic singalong with no amplification, or a private gathering limited to your own booked guests with no entertainment being provided commercially. The Live Music Act carved out some genuinely useful exemptions for smaller scale unamplified and lightly amplified performances, but the exemptions are narrower than most site owners assume, and they stop applying the moment alcohol is being sold rather than simply present. If you are in any doubt, a five minute call to your local authority's licensing team costs nothing and saves you guessing.

How to apply, and what it costs

A standard TEN needs to reach your local authority at least ten working days before the event, not counting the day you give the notice or the day of the event itself. There is also a late TEN option that can be given between five and nine working days beforehand, though it is more restricted and the authority or police can object to it more easily, so it should be a backup plan rather than your normal way of working. The fee is a flat £21 per notice, which is genuinely modest against the trouble of getting caught without one.

You will need to have a personal licence holder attached to the notice if alcohol is being sold, or you can give the notice as an individual without one, though the annual limits differ between the two, covered below. Most local authorities now run this online, and you will typically need:

The police and environmental health both receive a copy automatically and have a short window to raise concerns, most commonly about noise for a rural site near neighbours, which is worth thinking through before you submit rather than after somebody objects. If you have had noise complaints from neighbours before, it is worth proactively telling the authority how you plan to manage sound levels and finish times, since that tends to head off objections rather than invite them.

The limits you need to know

A TEN is designed for occasional use, not as a way of running a bar every weekend without a premises licence, and the annual limits reflect that:

For most CL and CS sites and small touring parks running the occasional themed weekend, these limits are generous. Where it starts to matter is a busier park hosting a run of club rallies through the summer, each with its own bar, since those add up against the same annual total. If that sounds like your season, it is worth mapping out your planned events in January rather than discovering in July that you have already used most of your allowance.

Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently

If your site is in Scotland, the equivalent route is an occasional licence under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act, applied for through your local licensing board rather than the council's licensing team, and the notice period and process differ from the TEN system in England and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own separate licensing framework again, administered through the courts rather than the council, so if you are running a site in Northern Ireland it is worth speaking to a local solicitor experienced in occasional licences well before your event date, since the timelines are less forgiving than the English system.

Building this into how you run events

None of this needs to be intimidating once you have done it once. Most owners find the biggest practical challenge is simply remembering to submit the notice early enough, especially when a booking for a club rally or a themed weekend comes in with only a few weeks' notice. Building a simple checklist into how you take these bookings, alongside your usual risk assessment for the weekend, means the licensing question gets asked at the point you agree to the event rather than the week before it, when your options have narrowed considerably.

It is also worth telling guests what to expect once the notice is in place. A clear message a day or two before an event, sent through your guest communications, setting out what time music will finish and any changes to normal quiet hours, heads off complaints far more effectively than a poster on the notice board that half your guests never read.

The takeaway

If your event involves selling alcohol, playing amplified music, or serving food and drink to a crowd after 11pm, plan on a temporary event notice as a normal part of organising it, not an afterthought. Submit it at least ten working days ahead, keep an eye on your annual allowance if you are running several events a season, and check the different rules if your site is in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Get into the habit of asking the licensing question the moment somebody books an event, and it becomes routine admin rather than a last minute scramble. If you want a simple way to keep event dates, guest numbers and communications organised in one place, CampSuite can help you plan the season without losing track of the details that matter.