The Notice · Issue 2
Licence before the announcement
The free Friday letter. Not the paid list. 4 September 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.
Issue 1 covered how to read a notice. This week is the gap between a licence and a press story, with one Bristol case 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.
Licence versus announcement
Under the Licensing Act 2003 a premises licence application is a public document on a licensing authority’s site. A press story is something else. It arrives when someone is ready to announce.
The application can sit in the open before the announcement. That is the useful gap if you sell into new rooms. You do not need every licensing paper. You need the room that is coming into being, dated, before the local paper runs the story.
We do not invent lead times. We date pairs when we can. The short piece is Licence before the announcement.
One sourced case: Domus, Bristol
One pair of dates. Not a sample. Not an average.
Domus, Bristol: a new grant dated 14 August 2026 on the Bristol grants register. On 28 August 2026 the Bristol Post announced a Brazilian steakhouse at the former Paco Tapas on Lower Guinea Street. Fourteen days between the grant date and the announcement.
It is one case. It is not a typical lead time or a forecast. We record the pair because the application is visible before the story.
Issue 1 had Shah’s, Reading: nine days. Domus is a second dated pair, same method.
New versus transfer once more
Domus is a new grant. Under the Act that means 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.
The short version is still New grant or transfer.
Coverage
As of 2 September 2026 the live file holds 32 applications across 13 councils. Last retrieved 29 August 2026. The councils are Bolton, Bristol, Camden, Charnwood, City of London, Cornwall, Croydon, Derby, Dudley, Kensington and Chelsea, Reading, Rother, and Wealden.
Four of those are London. The goal is all 33 London authorities. We do not invent a national completion date. If a licensing authority is not on that list, it is not in the product.
The Notice does not reprint those rows. See coverage if you want the same list on its own page. That page may lag the file.
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.