Drink License in a Guest House that cannot be open to non residents

[Dick&Dom]

i have planning permission to convert a double garage into a residents lounge area for our 6 bedroom guest house, where i can show sport, offer a wifi facility and snack type meals.

I also wanted to install a small bar area and license the premises. The planning dept said no problem. i then applied for the drinks licence.

The problem i have is that the council have now changed their minds (someone complained about possible noise)and stated that the bar area can only be used for our 12 residents and cannot be open to non-residents as the bar is not ancillary to the business. i am confused because most hotels and guest houses that are licensed are allowed to have non residents in.

why cant a licensed guest house have non-residents in?
has anyone out there got a licensed guest house allowing non-residents in ?

[Paul & Judith Barton]

Hate to say it but think that you are unlikely to get a 'full' licence and would be surprised if you would want to pay the (prohibitive) cost.
The local licensing laws are unhelpful for any small enterprise in that you not only have to have a 'personal' licence to show that you are an 'upstanding' member of the community but you also have to designate your 'premises' licence as to 'who' and 'where' you are going to serve.
We had 4 JP's AND the Court secretary 'inspect' us (and we are a 4 Star Guest House) to ensure we were suitable and were grilled to ensure that we understood the licensing laws - who we could/coudn't serve (e.g. when can a child have a drink) residents/non residents
We have held a personal and premises licence for nearly 10 years and we can only serve non residents if they are coming to join friends for an evening meal. You may be able to serve non residents in this way but suggest you will have very little joy going beyond it and indeed there have been several recent cases where a licence has either been refused or recinded for circumstances similar to those that you describe. Hotels are different as they are more often than not open to non residents for functions, meals etc and they do pay a lot more for the licence. I cannot recall a single B & B/ Guest House with a full license.
Good luck!

[_Sharpe]

Not sure this will help as everyone is different. We own a bed and breakfast with 7 rooms. We also have a small restaurant but mainly just cater for our guests on a dinner, bed and breakfast basis. We don't advertise but we do have good general community customer base. We also have a bar. We have a full license for both the bar and an outside patio space. It didn't seem all that expensive. We did have to take a course about licensing law and as the previous poster has said, had to stand up in court before a panel of judges to swear that we were competent. It was 10 minutes and not at all challenging, no "grilling" and I'm surprised they made such a big deal of it. Are you sure they're not your competitors?

I've got the personal license. We originally just had a residents license but went for the full license within a year and that was easy. Our solicitor arranged it all. We've got a big patio garden with lots of tables and people wanted to enjoy a drink there.

The difference with your situation, is that when we took over, there was already a license for residents. So, the neighbours didn't have an issue. That's your problem. Why not go for the conversion and a resident's license and then in a year, once the dust has settled, go for a full license?

[Raincliffe1]

When I applied for a residents' license I was amazed at the amount of paperwork, photocopying and annotating plans of our building (ten times I think) all for a small bar. One thing to bear in mind if you apply for a license and then seek to vary it a year later is the cost of advertising the premises license application plus any restrictions in the local press. Just to insert the notice in our local press was in the region of £250.00: I hope to goodness it would not have been the same if we had to vary any of the terms at a later date.

Katherine