Licensing and Challenge Age Policy

A complete premises licensing policy covering the four licensing objectives, the DPS, Challenge 21/25, accepted ID including digital proof of age, refusals and training.

Editable Word document
17
10pages
Guidance notes included
aml consultancy solutions

Hospitality & food

Licensing and Challenge Age Policy

About this document

What it’s for

A written policy for any café, restaurant, pub, bar or takeaway that sells alcohol under a premises licence in England and Wales. It doubles as the age verification policy that the mandatory licensing conditions require you to adopt, and shows licensing officers, the police and trading standards how you promote the four licensing objectives day to day.

When to use it

  • When you first obtain a premises licence or take over licensed premises
  • When you change DPS, opening hours or licence conditions
  • When you decide whether to accept digital proof of age (allowed from 15 September 2026)
  • After a failed test purchase, a licence review or a serious incident

What’s inside

The document is laid out in the sections below. Each one comes with a plain-English guidance note explaining what it does and what to change.

  1. Purpose and policy statement
  2. Scope
  3. Definitions
  4. Roles and responsibilities
  5. Premises licence and conditions
  6. Authorisation of alcohol sales
  7. Challenge age policy
  8. Acceptable proof of age
  9. How to check ID
  10. Refusing a sale and the refusals register
  11. Proxy purchases, groups and young people dining
  12. Children on the Premises
  13. Drunkenness and vulnerable customers
  14. Mandatory licensing conditions
  15. Prevention of crime and disorder
  16. Public safety
  17. Prevention of public nuisance
  18. Visits, test purchases and enforcement
  19. Records
  20. Training
  21. Monitoring and review

Also included

  • Declaration

How to complete it

  • Fill in the premises and DPS details and choose Challenge 21 or Challenge 25 in section 7
  • Choose Option A or Option B on digital proof of age in section 8
  • Copy every condition from your licence into Schedule 1 and say how you meet it
  • Train every member of staff before their first sale and record it in Schedule 2

Key points to check

  • Your licence conditions override this policy where they are stricter
  • Scotland and Northern Ireland have different licensing laws – see the note at the end of section 2

Our templates are professionally structured starting points for UK businesses, not legal advice. For anything complex, unusual or high-value, have your final version checked by a solicitor.

Included in the pack

Hospitality & food

£20

for every document in this category

Editable Microsoft Word files

Guidance notes in every document

Written for UK businesses

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