A presentation night that runs from 7pm to 1am lasts six hours. Under the Licensing Act it uses two days, and both come out of the 21 days a premises can have under Temporary Event Notices in 2026. Finish at 11.30pm and it would have used one.
Most clubs and pubs learn how the days are counted when the council turns down a notice in November. The rules are short once they are written down, and our free Temporary Event Notice tracker applies them to your own events as you add them. This is what it is counting, and why.
Any part of a day is a whole day
The premises limit in the Licensing Act 2003 is counted in days, not hours. Any calendar day on which the event is running counts as one of them, however little of it the event uses. An event that starts at 11pm on Friday and ends at 12.30am on Saturday runs for ninety minutes and uses two days. An event from 10am to 11pm on a Saturday runs for thirteen hours and uses one.
So the clock on the wall matters more than the length of the event. A bar that closes at midnight has used one day. Keep it open for last orders at 12.15am and the notice covers two. Committees often put a generous end time on the form to give themselves room, and a notice that says 1am for a bar that will actually shut at 11.45pm costs a day for nothing. What counts is the end time on the notice, not the time the last person goes home.
New Year's Eve is the extreme case. A party from 8pm on 31 December to 1am on 1 January uses a day from each calendar year's allowance, because the allowance runs from January to December rather than over a rolling twelve months. Somebody planning the year in January needs to remember that December has already taken one.
Fifteen notices, 21 days, and the days go first
A premises can have 15 TENs in a calendar year, covering no more than 21 days in total. Both limits apply at once, and for a club that runs weekend events it is the days that run out.
A beer festival from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening uses three days. Seven of them use all 21, and the premises is left with eight notices it cannot use for anything. A cricket club with a festival weekend, a summer fete, a presentation night that runs past midnight and a New Year's Eve party has already used seven days before anyone asks about a quiz night or a wedding reception in the pavilion.
The notices are the number people keep track of, because each one is a form and a £21 fee, which makes them easy to tally. The days are not written down anywhere except in the start and end times on each form, and nobody adds them up until the council does. The council keeps its own running total for each premises and issues a counter notice for the event that would take it over. That event cannot go ahead with licensable activities, however long ago it was booked.
The count belongs to the premises, not to a person. A notice given by the club secretary and one given by the bar steward both come out of the same 21 days.
Less than 24 hours apart and the later notice is void
Section 101 of the Act requires at least 24 hours between the end of one event and the start of the next, where both notices are given by the same person for the same premises. If the gap is shorter, the later notice is void. There is no hearing and no counter notice, and the event is not merged into the earlier one. The notice simply has no effect.
The rule also covers people connected to whoever gave the first notice. A notice from their spouse or civil partner, a close relative, their agent or their employee is treated as though they had given it themselves. So is a notice from somebody they are in business with, where both events involve the licensable activities that business carries on.
For a club this rules out the obvious weekend. A Friday disco that finishes at 1am on Saturday and a Saturday function that starts at 7pm are eighteen hours apart. If the same committee member gives both notices, the Saturday one is void and the bar that night is unlicensed. Finishing the Friday event earlier or moving the second event to Sunday afternoon fixes the gap. Having a different person give the second notice only helps if they are not an associate or business partner of the first, and their notice still uses the same premises allowance.
A late TEN counts the same and is easier to lose
A late TEN is one given between five and nine working days before the event. It costs the same £21, and it uses the same notices and days from the premises allowance as a standard one. It also counts against the personal limits of whoever gives it. Somebody without a personal licence can give five TENs a year, of which no more than two can be late. With a personal licence those figures are fifty and ten.
The difference is what happens when somebody objects. With a standard TEN, an objection from the police or environmental health goes to a hearing, and the licensing committee decides whether the event goes ahead, sometimes with conditions attached. With a late TEN there is no hearing. An objection means a counter notice, and the event cannot go ahead with licensable activities.
That makes a late TEN the wrong choice for any event with a history. A disco that ran late last year and brought a noise complaint is exactly the event environmental health will look at, and as a late TEN the club gets no chance to answer the objection. Late notices are best kept for small, quiet events where an objection is unlikely.
Most clubs that end up with a late TEN never meant to give one. They misread the deadline, which is the next problem.
Two deadline tables, two different answers
A standard TEN has to reach the council at least ten working days before the event. The count leaves out the day the council receives it and the first day of the event, and it skips weekends and bank holidays. Councils and licensing solicitors publish tables of the last dates for the busy weekends, and they do not always agree.
Take Halloween this year, which falls on Saturday 31 October 2026. Poppleston Allen, the licensing solicitors, give Friday 16 October as the last day for a standard TEN and Friday 23 October for a late one. Bath and North East Somerset Council's table gives 18 October and 25 October. Both of those are Sundays.
Counting it by hand settles it. Going back from Saturday 31 October, the working days before the event are the 30th, 29th, 28th, 27th and 26th, then the 23rd, 22nd, 21st, 20th and 19th. That is ten, so the notice has to arrive by Friday 16 October.
A club working from the later table that sends the form on Saturday 17th will have it received on Monday 19th. That leaves nine clear working days. The notice is now a late TEN, it uses one of the late allowances, and it is refused outright if anyone objects. Nobody on the committee decided to give a late notice. The table decided it for them.
2027, and keeping count
The limits are due to go up. From 1 January 2027 a premises is expected to be allowed 20 TENs covering 26 days a year, subject to Parliamentary approval. Five more days is enough for one more festival weekend and one more presentation night that runs past midnight. Nothing we have seen changes the way a day is counted, so an event that crosses midnight will still use two.
Until then the 2026 limits of 15 notices and 21 days apply to every event dated in 2026, whenever the notice is given. A New Year's Eve party that runs into 2027 takes a day from each year.
None of this is hard to count. It is hard to keep counted across a committee, a year and several people giving notices, each of whom knows about their own events and not the others. Our free Temporary Event Notice tracker works out the last day for a standard TEN and the window for a late one, skipping weekends and England and Wales bank holidays. It keeps a running count of notices and days for each premises, charges a day for every calendar day an event touches, and warns when two events are less than 24 hours apart, when an event has more than 499 people or when it runs past 168 hours. Everything stays in your browser, and the summary prints on one page for the committee.
Questions
Does an event that goes past midnight use two days of the TEN allowance?
Yes. Any part of a calendar day counts as a whole day, so an event from 7pm to 1am uses two of the 21 days a premises can have in 2026. Finishing before midnight keeps it to one.
What happens if two TEN events are less than 24 hours apart?
If both notices come from the same person, or from their relative, agent, employee or business partner, the later notice is void under section 101 of the Licensing Act 2003. The event it covers has no authorisation.
Can a late TEN be refused?
Yes. If the police or environmental health object to a late TEN, the council issues a counter notice and there is no hearing. A standard TEN that draws an objection goes to a hearing instead.
How many TENs can a premises have in 2027?
From 1 January 2027 the limit is expected to rise to 20 TENs covering 26 days a year, subject to Parliamentary approval. In 2026 it is 15 TENs and 21 days.
The days run out before the notices do
A free deadline calculator and a running count of notices and days for every premises you use. Nothing is uploaded.
Open the TEN tracker