Boring Paperwork, Better Rooms: Getting a One-Night Show Through the Permission Maze

Every project has a moment where the creative bit is done and the admin bit starts, and everyone in the group chat goes quiet. Usually it lands about three weeks out, when someone reads the venue’s terms and conditions properly and discovers that “we can use it for the evening” was doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting.

We have run enough temporary shows, screenings and one-off performances now to know that the paperwork isn’t a tax on the art. It’s the shape of the room the art gets to happen in. If the licence says the music stops at eleven, then eleven is part of your running order, whether you like it or not. Better to design with that in front of you than to discover it at 10.55 with a full room and a sound engineer giving you a look.

So here’s the version we actually use. It’s not legal advice, it’s a producer’s memory aid — and the general rule is that the smaller the venue, the more of this falls on you rather than on a house team.

Start with the building, not the art

Before you think about the work, find out what the building is allowed to do. Ask three questions in the first email: What is the premises licence and can we see it? Is there a designated premises supervisor we’ll be working with? And what have you had refused before?

That last one is the useful one. Venues remember what got them into trouble. If the answer is “a drum kit at a wedding”, you know to plan around a drum kit.

If the building doesn’t hold the right licence — or doesn’t have one at all — you may be looking at a Temporary Event Notice. In England and Wales a standard TEN costs £21 and needs to reach the licensing authority at least ten working days before the event; a late TEN gives you five working days and a higher chance of an objection from the police or environmental health. They cover a maximum of 499 people and 168 hours, and you only get a limited number per year per premises, so check who has already used them up. Scotland and Northern Ireland run on different systems entirely, and Wales has its own variations — assume nothing, ring the council.

Insurance: read the schedule, not the certificate

Public liability insurance is the thing everyone says they have and almost nobody has read. The certificate is a one-page summary; the schedule behind it tells you what’s excluded. Look for these specifically:

• The limit of indemnity. £5 million is the common ask from councils and landlords. £2 million often won’t satisfy a venue’s hire agreement.
• Whether the cover is for the event or the year. A one-off policy is fine for one night and useless for a tour.
• Exclusions. Fire, pyrotechnics, bouncy castles, aerial work, weapons, and anything involving under-16s unsupervised will usually be carved out.
• Employers’ liability if you’re paying anyone — including a technician on a day rate. This is legally required in most cases and it is not the same policy.

If the venue’s own insurance covers you as a hirer, get that in writing with the limit stated. “I think we’re covered” is not a sentence you want to be reconstructing after an incident.

Noise: the neighbour is a stakeholder, not an obstacle

Sound is where temporary events most often meet the council. Environmental health officers work to a statutory nuisance framework, and licensing committees work to four objectives, one of which is the prevention of public nuisance. Neither of those is interested in whether the set was good.

Practical moves we now build in as standard:

1. Ask the venue what sound limit has been agreed previously. If there isn’t one, propose your own and put it in writing.
2. Name a sound person and give them a decibel meter. A cheap handheld meter held at the nearest residential facade is crude but persuasive, and the act of measuring changes behaviour.
3. Set a curfew earlier than the legal one. If the licence says midnight, programme to 11.15pm and use the margin for the thing that always overruns.
4. Keep doors shut and lobby noise in. The bass leaking out of a propped fire door is what generates complaints, not the bass inside.

Tell the neighbours before they tell you

This is the step people skip and it is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy. A week out, put a handwritten note through the doors immediately adjacent — and above, if there are flats — with the date, the times, a contact number and an actual name. Not a corporate flyer. A note.

Then, on the night, have that person answer the phone. A neighbour who can reach a human at 9.40pm and get the volume turned down is a neighbour who probably won’t file a complaint. A neighbour who can only reach a voicemail is a neighbour who now has a grievance with a timestamp on it.

If you can, put a couple of complimentary tickets in the envelope. It is astonishing how much goodwill a free entry buys.

The street is a licence too

Anything spilling outside the building needs its own permission. Pavement licences, street trading consents, tables and chairs, a banner on the highway (that’s advertisement consent, not a poster), a queue that blocks a bus stop, a generator on the footway. If you’re filming or photographing, you need consent signage and a plan for anyone who doesn’t want to be in shot — GDPR applies to artists’ documentation as much as to anyone else.

And check the fire side: stated capacity, clear exits, extinguishers on their pins, cables taped rather than looped, nothing blocking the back door because that’s where the merch table looks nice. PAT test anything you plug in that isn’t yours.

The night-before list

Print one page. Licence or TEN, insurance schedule, risk assessment, fire plan, capacity number, sound limit and meter, named contact, neighbour notes delivered, first aider, accessible route and loo confirmed, keys and alarm code, and a number for the person who owns the building.

None of that is glamorous. All of it is what lets a room relax. When the permissions are settled, nobody has to stand by the door doing mental arithmetic about the council. The work gets the attention instead. That’s the whole point.