The Notice · Issue 1
How to read a notice
The free Friday letter. Not the paid list. 28 August 2026.
What this is
The Notice is the free letter from Opening Notice. It is weekly, and it lives here as a page. It is not the paid list of applications.
The list is dated premises licence applications: new versus transfer, a council page you can open, and, when you take Founding National, a way to verify and export by place. That layer is £99 a month, locked. This letter does not reprint those rows.
What this letter is for is craft. How to read a notice. Why a new grant is not a transfer. Why a licence is not an announcement. One sourced public case when we have one we can date.
If you want future issues, subscribe. We’ll email The Notice weekly. You can unsubscribe any time. That is a different request from Founding National.
New versus transfer
If you sell food and drink into new rooms, you do not need every licensing paper. You need the room that is coming into being.
Under the Licensing Act 2003 a premises licence authorises the use of a place for licensable activities. A new grant is an application for a licence that is not already there. A transfer moves an existing licence from one holder to another.
If you sell into a new café, a new off-licence, or a new late room, the new grant is the notice that matters. A transfer tells you the room already exists and the name on the paper is changing. Both are public. They are not the same job.
We do not name people on this letter and we do not score rooms. The article is the short version.
One sourced case: Shah’s, Reading
One pair of dates. Already on this site. Not a sample.
Shah’s in Reading: a premises licence dated 12 August 2026. On 21 August the Reading Chronicle announced the opening, and the operator’s own site announced it too. Nine days between the licence date and the announcement.
It is one case. It is not an average, a typical lead time, or a forecast. We record the pair because the application is visible before the story.
Read the dated note and the article. If you need a second case, wait until we have one we can date the same way.
How to check a council notice
A premises licence application is a public document on a licensing authority’s site. You do not have to take our word for the date.
The method is the same as How to check a notice on the council site.
- Open the council page.
- Read the premises name and the address on that page, not on ours.
- Read the application type, in particular new grant versus transfer.
- Read the date on the notice.
- If the page has moved, use the council’s own licensing search. The authority is the source.
That is the whole check. There is no dashboard score and no map. If a page 404s, the council has pulled or moved the notice. The legal frame is the Licensing Act 2003. Our note is a pointer, not advice.
Coverage
As of 28 August 2026 the file holds 30 applications across 11 councils. Last pulled 28 August 2026. The councils are Bolton, Bristol, Camden, Charnwood, Cornwall, Croydon, Dudley, Kensington and Chelsea, Reading, Rother, and Wealden.
That is the file. We do not cover every council in the country. If a licensing authority is not on that list, it is not in the product.
The Notice does not reprint those thirty rows. See coverage if you want the same list on its own page.
Close
If you want future issues, subscribe. We’ll email The Notice weekly. You can unsubscribe any time.
Founding National is a different ask. It is the weekday list: dated applications, new versus transfer, a page you can open. £99 a month, locked. There is no live checkout. That request lives on the price page.
The Notice is free. The list is not.