Les, if you (or your friend) is going for a one-off event, the best thing is to get a Temporary Event Notice (TEN), which costs about £20. You can have ten or twelve (can't remember) of these in the same place a year. This means that, if entertainment is not on the Premises Licence, the event would still be legal, and it can't be refused without an extremely good reason.

If, however, you want a regular session, the Premises Licence must include the entertainment permission. If it doesn't, it can be added - at a price. We were quoted £120 to add permission to show films to our village hall's Premises Licence. This is a one-off, not annual. It might be that the premises concerned will have to go through hoops to obtain the permission though - that depends on your local Council.

The entertainment section is usually for music, and does not include, for instance, drama. So legally it doesn't enable you to do a mumming play (without a TEN), but our local Council doesn't seem to worry too much about that - but we don't advertise a performance anywhere where they don't have at least the entertainment permission, and that has to be somewhere *very* remote, where local government officers are unlikely to be! In practice, most of the landlords locally are very aware of the need for the entertainment permission, and don't let sessions or anything else happen without it.

Hope this helps.

Barbara

Hope this helps.