The compliance half of a pub, bar or restaurant move: licence transfers and variations, the DPS, duty-paid stock, cellar and kitchen decommissioning, and the order it has to happen in.
You cannot transfer a premises licence from one building to another. That single fact catches out more operators than anything else in a licensed move: a premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 attaches to the property, not to you, so moving site means an application for a licence at the new address and a decision about what happens to the one you already hold. Transferring a premises licence in the legal sense means moving an existing licence into a different holder’s name at the same address, which is a completely different piece of paperwork.
This page covers the compliance half of a licensed move rather than the lorries: which licensing application you actually need, how the designated premises supervisor is varied, how duty-paid stock is handled and evidenced, what has to happen before cellar gas and kitchen gas can be disconnected, how you register with environmental health at the new address, and the sequence that keeps you trading legally at both ends. For the physical side — crews, cellar contents, glassware, the flat above the bar and how quickly the doors can open — see our guide to moving a pub or restaurant. As a BAR-member Sussex removals firm we work alongside your solicitor and licensing agent on this, we do not replace them.
There are four routes and picking the wrong one costs weeks. A transfer of the premises licence applies where the licence stays with the building and the holder changes — you are buying an existing pub and the licence passes from the outgoing operator to you. It needs the existing holder’s written consent, it goes to the licensing authority with a copy to the police, and the police have a short window to object on crime and disorder grounds. Ask for it to take effect immediately on receipt and you can trade from the day the application lands, subject to that objection period.
An interim authority notice covers the situation where the previous holder has died, become insolvent or had their licence lapse, and it keeps the licence alive for a limited period while a proper transfer is made. It is a rescue mechanism with a tight deadline attached, and missing the deadline means the licence lapses entirely and you are back to a fresh application.
A variation is what you need when the licence stays where it is but the operation changes: different hours, a different licensable activity, a different layout on the plan, or a condition you want lifted. A full variation runs the same consultation as a new application, including the pale-blue notice displayed at the premises and a notice in a local newspaper. A minor variation is faster and cheaper but only covers changes that cannot adversely affect the licensing objectives.
A new premises licence is what a genuine relocation needs, because the old licence cannot follow you down the road. Expect a consultation period during which the responsible authorities — police, fire, environmental health, planning, trading standards, child protection and the licensing authority itself — can make representations, and a licensing sub-committee hearing if anyone does. Fees for all of these are set nationally in bands based on the rateable value of the property, so an ex-brewery corner site and a small restaurant unit do not pay the same. Start this before you exchange, not after.
Every premises licence that authorises the sale of alcohol has to name a designated premises supervisor, and that person has to hold a personal licence. A premises licence with no DPS named on it cannot authorise a single alcohol sale, which is the quiet trap in a change of operator: the outgoing DPS resigns, nobody files the variation, and the pub is technically selling alcohol unlawfully from opening on Monday.
Varying the DPS is its own application. It needs the new supervisor’s written consent on the prescribed form, it goes to the licensing authority with a copy to the police, and it can be requested to take immediate effect so there is no gap. The police can object within their statutory window if they think the individual is unsuitable, and if they do the matter goes to a hearing. Where the licence is being transferred to you and the DPS is changing at the same time, the two applications are submitted together and dated so that neither leaves a hole.
The personal licence itself belongs to the person and not the building, so it travels with you and needs nothing done to it when you move. What it does not do is authorise anything on its own. Alcohol sales have to be made or authorised by a personal licence holder, so if the DPS is not going to be on the floor, put the authorisation in writing and name the individuals it covers. A written authorisation sheet in the office file is the single easiest thing to produce when a licensing officer asks and the hardest to invent afterwards.
Two housekeeping duties get forgotten on move week. The premises licence summary — the A4 sheet — must be displayed at the premises, and the name of the person authorised to hold the licence has to be displayed with it. And the original licence and plan need to be kept safe at the premises: if you lose them, you are applying for a certified copy before you can prove anything to anyone. Both documents travel in the manager’s own hands, never in the load.
Alcohol duty is paid when goods leave a bonded warehouse, and once it is paid, moving your own duty-paid stock from one of your premises to another is ordinary trading rather than a duty event. What you must be able to do is prove the duty status of everything on your shelves. Keep the purchase invoices for the stock that travels, keep them with the stock rather than in a box in the flat, and be able to produce them: HMRC and trading standards can and do ask, and stock without a paper trail is the fastest way to turn a house move into an investigation.
Where you buy matters as much as what you paid. Anyone selling alcohol to you for onward sale has to be approved under the Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme, and every approved wholesaler has a unique reference number you can check against HMRC’s online lookup. You have a legal duty to carry out that check on your suppliers. A move is a natural moment to redo it, because the new site often means new local suppliers and a new cash-and-carry account.
If the business is changing hands rather than just changing address, the stock is normally valued by an independent stocktaker on completion day, with the cellar, back bar, spirits, wine and food counted line by line and the figure settled between the parties. Book the stocktaker early: they are busy on the last Friday of the month for exactly the same reason removers are. Run the perishable and cask stock down deliberately in the fortnight beforehand so there is less to argue about and less to move.
Physically, most alcohol is better not going in a removal lorry at all. Cask ale is a live product and will not settle again after a road journey. Kegs and casks go back to the brewery or supplier and are replaced at the new site. Sealed spirits and packaged beer travel perfectly well in removal-grade cartons. Wine is the exception worth spending money on: it dislikes heat and vibration, so it goes in temperature-stable transit, and a serious cellar is a job for a specialist wine carrier rather than a general removal. Glass and bottle packing follows the same divider-carton method we use for fragile household items.
Nothing in a cellar comes apart until the right certificated person has been. Start with the gas cylinders, because they are the item people casually load onto a lorry and should not. Carbon dioxide and mixed-gas cylinders are pressurised vessels, they remain the supplier’s property, and carrying them in a general removal load is not something a household goods insurance policy contemplates. They go back to the gas supplier on their own vehicle. While they are still connected, the cellar CO2 alarm stays live and stays tested — a cellar with a leaking cylinder and a disabled alarm is a confined space that has killed people.
Cellar cooling is the next item and it is the one with a legal trap in it. A cellar cooler contains fluorinated refrigerant gas, and venting that gas to atmosphere is an offence. The unit has to be decommissioned by an engineer holding the relevant F-gas certification, who recovers the refrigerant and records what came out. Those records belong with the equipment, so ask for the certificate and put it in the compliance file. If the system is over the size threshold, its leak-check log has to be kept and handed over as well, and an incoming operator who cannot produce that history has inherited a problem.
Beer lines and the python are flushed and cleaned before anything is broken, not afterwards. A line full of stale beer that sits in a van for a week is not going back into service. Where the site is brewery-tied, the brewery’s own technical services team almost always does the disconnection and the reconnection at the other end, because the equipment is theirs. On a free house it is an independent cellar services firm. Either way, book them for the day before the removal crew arrives, not the same morning.
Finally, settle the asset list in writing before any of this starts. Cellar cooling, the python, coolers, fonts, dispense equipment and often the cellar racking belong to the landlord or the brewery rather than to the operator, and the fixtures and fittings schedule in the lease is the document that decides it. Get the schedule agreed and signed, mark up what is going, and give our surveyor that list at the survey. Disputes about a stainless steel table on move morning cost more in time than the table is worth.
A commercial kitchen cannot be unplugged by a removal crew and it cannot be unplugged by a domestic heating engineer either. Gas catering appliances have to be disconnected and capped by a Gas Safe registered engineer whose registration specifically covers commercial catering work — a domestic ticket is not the same qualification and a domestic engineer signing off a six-burner range is a document that will not stand up. Ask to see the registration card, and ask for a written record of the disconnection, because the incoming occupier of the old site will want it and your insurer may too.
The same engineer, or an equivalent one at the new address, has to commission the appliances at the other end and issue a gas safety record for the installation. That record has to exist before you serve food, and it is one of the documents environmental health will look for. Build in the fact that commercial gas engineers are booked weeks ahead, and that a reconnection cannot be scheduled until you know the equipment is actually in the room.
Water-fed equipment brings its own compliance layer. Combi ovens, ice machines, glasswashers and dishwashers all need connections that prevent backflow into the mains, and installing them in a commercial setting is notifiable to the water undertaker under the water fittings regulations. Electrics are the parallel item: a commercial kitchen at a new address wants a satisfactory fixed-wire inspection report on the installation, plus portable appliance testing on everything that plugs in, and both are far easier to arrange before the kitchen is full of equipment than after.
Extraction is usually fixed plant that stays with the building, but the ductwork cleaning records are not. Keep the cleaning certificates for the canopy and duct system, because insurers routinely ask for evidence of cleaning to the recognised grease-duct standard, and a gap in the record at handover is awkward. Cold rooms and walk-in freezers are the same story: they are typically part of the building rather than your kit, and where the new site does not already have one, commissioning a replacement is a lead time measured in weeks, not days. The equipment that does travel — benches, tables, shelving, front-of-house furniture — is pad-wrapped and loaded exactly as we handle an office and business relocation.
Food business registration is separate from licensing, goes to the local authority for the new address, and has to be done at least 28 days before you start trading there. It is free and it cannot be refused. What it does is put you on the inspection list, and it is a criminal offence to operate an unregistered food business. The registration does not travel with you, so registering the new site is a fresh job even if you have been registered at the old one for years, and the old registration needs closing off when you stop trading there.
Your food safety management system has to be site-specific, which means the pack you have been keeping at the old kitchen cannot simply be carried across. The hazard analysis reflects the layout: where the raw preparation happens, how far it is from the cooked side, where the hand-wash basins are, what the fridge and freezer positions mean for the cooling chain, how deliveries reach the store. Rewrite the diary, the cleaning schedule, the supplier list and the temperature-recording sheets for the new room before you serve anything, and start the daily records from day one rather than backfilling them.
The other thing that does not travel is your food hygiene rating. A move means an unrated new business until the first inspection, and the first inspection may come weeks after opening. If your rating was a five and you are proud of it, that is a marketing problem worth planning for rather than a compliance one. What earns the rating back quickly is the same evidence file: the management system, the training records, the pest control contract, the cleaning records and the structural condition of the room.
Round off the compliance file with the items an officer will ask for on a first visit. A commercial waste contract at the new address with duty-of-care transfer notes retained, a pest control agreement, allergen information for every dish written down and available to staff, staff food hygiene training certificates, and the water and drainage arrangements for the kitchen. None of it is difficult; all of it is easier three weeks before opening than three days after.
The order matters more than the speed. Working backwards from the first service at the new site: roughly twelve weeks out, the licensing application for the new address goes in, along with any planning application, because those two run on separate tracks and neither waits for the other. At the same point, appoint the licensing solicitor or agent and confirm who is going to be named as designated premises supervisor.
Around eight weeks out, register the food business with the new local authority so the 28-day clock has slack in it, and book the commercial gas engineer, the F-gas engineer and the cellar services firm. These trades are the bottleneck in almost every licensed move, and they are the ones customers leave until last. Six weeks out, confirm the fixtures and fittings schedule with the landlord or brewery so everybody knows what is moving, and book the removal survey against that list — we quote licensed sites through the same commercial removals team that handles offices, and the scheduling advice in our guide to relocating with minimum disruption to trade applies here too.
Four weeks out, open the supplier and wholesaler accounts at the new address and check each wholesaler’s AWRS reference. Book the independent stocktaker for completion day. Start running perishable and cask stock down. Two weeks out, brief the staff, get the new site’s food safety management system written for the actual room, and confirm the EPOS and card terminal migration — cloud systems are usually a settings change, older tills are a physical replacement with its own lead time.
In the final week the rule is simple: do not surrender the old premises licence until the new one is in force and you have finished trading. The last legal sale at the old address must happen while that licence is still live and with a personal licence holder authorising it. Then the cellar and kitchen are decommissioned by the certificated trades, then the removal crew loads, then the equipment is commissioned and gas-tested at the new site, then environmental health and the compliance file, and only then do the doors open. Skipping a step does not save time, it just moves the delay somewhere more expensive.
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A premises licence and planning permission are two different consents from two different parts of the same council, and holding one tells you nothing about the other. A licence to sell alcohol until midnight is worth very little if the planning use of the building does not permit a pub or restaurant, or if a planning condition closes the outside area at nine. Check the planning history of the new address before you commit, and check whether any of the use is subject to conditions on hours, deliveries, extraction or noise. Where the building is listed, the extraction flue and the signage are both likely to need consent in their own right, and that is a lead time nobody enjoys discovering late.
Temporary event notices are the tool for covering a gap or testing a new site, and they have limits worth knowing before you rely on them. A TEN authorises licensable activity at a place for a short period, must be given to the licensing authority with copies to the police and environmental health in advance, and each premises and each notice-giver is capped for the year. They are useful for a launch event or a one-off during a licensing gap; they are not a substitute for a licence and a council will notice if you try to run a business on them.
Two smaller permissions catch people out on a relocation. Serving customers on the pavement outside needs a separate licence from the highway authority, with its own application, consultation and conditions about barriers and clear width. And late night refreshment — the sale of hot food or hot drink to the public between eleven at night and five in the morning — is a licensable activity in its own right, so a restaurant that trades late needs it on the licence even if it never sells a drop of alcohol.
Finally, remember that the licence is only as good as the plan attached to it. The premises plan filed with the licence defines the licensed area: bar, restaurant, garden, cellar, fire exits, the lot. If the new site’s layout changes after the licence is granted — you knock through, you extend the terrace, you move the bar — the plan has to be varied to match. Trading outside the plan is trading outside the licence, and it is one of the most common findings on a licensing visit.
Booking your move with us is a five-step process. One: enquire via the online quote form or call our office on 01323 848 008. We’ll arrange a survey within a few working days. Two: the survey itself, lasting 30–90 minutes depending on complexity. For licensed premises the surveyor walks the trading floor, cellar, kitchen and any flat above, photographs access and tail-lift positions, and works from your agreed fixtures and fittings schedule so we quote for what is actually moving.
Three: the written quote, emailed within 48 hours of the survey. Itemised by line so you see what every cost line covers. Four: deposit and date confirmation. Typically 25% deposit on confirmation, fully protected under the British Association of Removers’ Advance Payment Guarantee. Five: the move itself. Uniformed crew, our own lorry, no agency labour, blankets washed between jobs.
For pre-move questions, our office is reachable Monday to Friday 8am to 5:30pm and Saturday 9am to 1pm. We’d rather have the customer conversation early than late — a small clarification three weeks before move day saves a meaningful misunderstanding on the day itself. On a licensed job that conversation is usually about dates: which day the certificated trades are in, which day the last legal sale happens, and which day we can load. For the wider company background, our BAR membership and BS 8564 accreditation, the about-us page covers it.
For your specific move, we look forward to the conversation. Whether it is a village pub changing operator, a restaurant relocating two streets away or a bar fit-out going into commercial storage in Sussex between leases, the principles are consistent: survey against the fixtures schedule, written itemised quote, deposit-protected booking, crew you can rely on, and a schedule built around your licensing dates rather than ours. That is the standard behind the 120+ reviews and the 4.9 out of 5 rating we hold.
No. A premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 attaches to the address, not to the operator, so relocating means applying for a licence at the new premises. “Transferring” a premises licence means changing who holds it at the same address. The two are separate applications with separate forms and separate timescales.
The licence cannot authorise the sale of alcohol at all. Every alcohol sale would be unlicensed from opening. The variation naming the new designated premises supervisor needs their written consent, goes to the licensing authority with a copy to the police, and can be requested to take effect immediately so there is no gap.
No to both. Gas cylinders are pressure vessels that stay the supplier’s property and go back on the supplier’s own transport. A cellar cooler holds fluorinated refrigerant that must be recovered by an F-gas certificated engineer — venting it is an offence — and the recovery record belongs in your compliance file.
You need to be able to. Moving your own duty-paid stock between your own premises is normal trading, but keep the purchase invoices with the stock so the duty position can be evidenced on request, and check each wholesaler’s AWRS reference number against HMRC’s lookup when you open accounts at the new address.
It does not. Register the food business with the new local authority at least 28 days before you trade, and the new site starts unrated until its first inspection. The management system also has to be rewritten for the new layout rather than carried across, because the hazard analysis depends on the room.
Usually yes, and they are separate consents from separate teams. A licence does not override a planning condition on hours, extraction or the outside area, and a listed building will need consent for a flue or signage. Check the planning history of the new address before you commit to the lease.