Late Night Refreshment Licence: Food Trucks

If you sell hot food or hot drink from a food truck between 11pm and 5am, you probably need a premises licence authorising late night refreshment — and that is a completely separate authorisation from your street trading licence, issued under a different Act by a different team at the same council.

There is one exemption that matters more than all the others for mobile traders: supply from a vehicle that is not parked is not late night refreshment at all. If you are genuinely on the move, you are outside the regime. The moment you park, you are inside it.

That distinction is worth understanding properly, because trading without the licence when you need one carries a prison sentence as a possible outcome.

What Counts as Late Night Refreshment

The definition sits in Schedule 2 of the Licensing Act 2003. A person "provides late night refreshment" if:

"at any time between the hours of 11.00 p.m. and 5.00 a.m., he supplies hot food or hot drink to members of the public, or a section of the public, on or from any premises, whether for consumption on or off the premises"

Several things follow from that wording, and each one catches people out.

It is about the clock, not the trading session. Serving from 6pm to 11:30pm means the last half hour is licensable. There is no grace period.

It covers hot drink as well as hot food. A coffee van at a night market is in exactly the same position as a burger van.

The test reaches "a section of the public", not only the public at large. Trading at a private event to invited guests is not automatically outside the regime, because the definition catches supply to "members of the public, or a section of the public". Schedule 2 deals with genuinely closed groups separately, at paragraph 3 — so the question is whether that paragraph applies, not whether the event feels private.

The other phrase worth noticing is "on or from any premises". Section 193 of the Act defines "premises" as "any place and includes a vehicle, vessel or moveable structure", so a food truck is premises for these purposes. That is exactly why the vehicle exemption below has to be read closely rather than assumed.

Cold food is outside the regime entirely. Selling cold sandwiches and canned drinks at 2am needs no late night refreshment authorisation, though you will still need whatever street trading permission the location requires.

The Exemption That Matters: Vehicles That Are Not Parked

Schedule 2 lists supplies that are exempt. The one written for mobile traders is paragraph 5(1)(e):

"the supply of hot food or hot drink on a vehicle at a time when the vehicle is not permanently or temporarily parked"

Read it carefully, because it is narrower than it first looks. The exemption applies at the time of supply. It is not a status your business holds; it is a description of what the vehicle is doing at the moment you hand food through the hatch.

A van that pulls up, opens a hatch, serves a queue and drives on is temporarily parked while it serves. That is inside the regime. Practically, the exemption is aimed at supply from a vehicle in motion — a train buffet trolley, an aircraft, a coach service — rather than at a food truck working a pitch.

If your operating model is "park up at a pitch after 11pm and serve", assume you need the licence and check with the council rather than relying on this exemption. Nobody is served by discovering the point in a magistrates' court.

The Other Exemptions

Schedule 2's remaining exemptions are a closed list, and it is worth knowing what is actually on it.

Paragraph 3 covers closed groups — where nobody will be admitted or served except as "a member of a recognised club", "a person staying at a particular hotel, or at particular comparable premises, for the night in question", "an employee of a particular employer", someone "engaged in a particular trade" or following a particular profession or vocation, or "a guest of a person falling within any of paragraphs (a) to (d)".

Paragraph 5 exempts hot drink "which consists of or contains alcohol", supply "by means of a vending machine", supply "free of charge", supply "by a registered charity or a person authorised by a registered charity", and the unparked-vehicle case above.

Paragraph 4 covers premises licensed for public exhibitions under the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1966 or as near beer premises under the London Local Authorities Act 1995.

Those three paragraphs plus the local-designation power at paragraph 2A, covered in the next section, are the whole of it. In particular there is no exemption for schools or hospitals supplying their own pupils or patients — the Schedule does not mention them at all, and any argument along those lines would have to be run on the paragraph 1(1) definition rather than as an exempt supply. None of these usually helps a street trader.

Your Council May Have Switched the Requirement Off

This is the part almost no guide mentions, and it can save you an application.

Since 2015, licensing authorities have had a power to disapply late night refreshment licensing locally. Paragraph 2A of Schedule 2 provides that a supply is exempt if it takes place:

"(a) on or from premises which are wholly situated in an area designated by the relevant licensing authority; (b) on or from premises which are of a description designated by the relevant licensing authority; or (c) during a period (beginning no earlier than 11.00 p.m. and ending no later than 5.00 a.m.) designated by the relevant licensing authority."

In plain terms, a council can exempt a whole area, a category of premises, or a slice of the night — for example, exempting 11pm to midnight so only genuinely late trading is caught.

Some councils have used this power; most have not. It is worth one email to the licensing team before you assume you need to apply. Ask specifically whether the authority has made a designation under paragraph 2A of Schedule 2 — asking in those terms usually gets a faster and more accurate answer than "do I need a late night licence?"

Applying for the Licence

Late night refreshment is a licensable activity, so the authorisation is a premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003 — the same instrument pubs use for alcohol, applied to your pitch.

The process is more involved than a street trading application:

1. Apply to the licensing authority for the area where the premises (your pitch) sits, using their premises licence application form.
2. Submit an operating schedule setting out your hours and the steps you will take to promote the four licensing objectives: preventing crime and disorder, public safety, preventing public nuisance, and protecting children from harm. For a late-night food unit, nuisance and dispersal are usually the live issues.
3. Advertise the application. You must display a notice at the premises and publish one in a local newspaper. Getting this wrong is the most common reason applications are restarted.
4. Serve the application on the responsible authorities — police, fire, environmental health and others.
5. Wait out the 28-day representation period. If nobody objects, the licence is granted. If a responsible authority or a local resident objects, it goes to a licensing sub-committee hearing.

For occasional late trading, use a temporary event notice instead. A TEN covers a one-off event and is far quicker and cheaper than a full premises licence. If you only trade past 11pm at a handful of festivals a year, TENs are usually the right instrument — but they are capped in number per premises and per person each year, so they do not substitute for a licence if late trading is your regular pattern.

What Happens If You Get It Wrong

Section 136 of the Licensing Act 2003 creates the offence:

"A person commits an offence if— (a) he carries on or attempts to carry on a licensable activity on or from any premises otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorisation, or (b) he knowingly allows a licensable activity to be so carried on."

On summary conviction the penalty is "imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine, or to both". The fine is not capped at a standard-scale level.

Set that against unlicensed street trading, which under Schedule 4 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 carries a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale and no prison sentence. Late night refreshment is the more serious of the two offences, and it is the one operators are least likely to know about.

How This Stacks With Your Street Trading Licence

The two authorisations are independent and neither substitutes for the other:

	Street trading licence / consent	Late night refreshment
Act	Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, Sch 4	Licensing Act 2003, Sch 2
What it authorises	Trading on a designated street	Supplying hot food or drink 11pm–5am
Needed per council?	Yes — one per council area	Yes — per premises, so per pitch
Typical duration	12 months	Open-ended until surrendered or revoked
Council team	Licensing / markets	Licensing (alcohol and entertainment)

For an operator working three councils and trading late in two of them, that is five authorisations with separate renewal and review dates. The council-by-council cost breakdown covers what the street trading half costs, and the step-by-step application guide covers the process for the street trading licence itself.

Before You Trade Late

• Check whether your trading actually crosses 11pm — including the last order, not just the advertised close
• Ask the licensing authority whether it has made a paragraph 2A designation for your area or time band
• If late trading is occasional, price up temporary event notices before a full premises licence
• If it is regular, start the premises licence application at least 3 months ahead — the notice period and any hearing take time
• Keep the late night refreshment authorisation on the same renewal tracker as your street trading licences; it is the one people forget because it does not expire annually

Use our free compliance checker to see which authorisations your setup needs, and the licence cost calculator to estimate the street trading half across the councils you work. StreetComply is building a dashboard that tracks every licence, certificate and renewal date across every council you trade in — join the waitlist to hear when it launches.

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This guide covers England and Wales; the Licensing Act 2003 does not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland. In Scotland the counterpart regime is not the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 — that Act governs alcohol — but the late hours catering licence under section 42 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which requires a licence "for the use of premises between the hours of eleven o'clock in the evening and five o'clock the following morning for the sale to or consumption by the public of food": the same 11pm–5am clock, under a different Act, and section 42(4)(a) carves 2005-Act licensed premises out of it. Whether a mobile unit falls within "premises" for section 42 is a question for the licensing authority, so confirm the position with the relevant Scottish council before trading late north of the border. In England and Wales, licensing decisions and local designations are made by individual councils — confirm your position with the relevant licensing authority before trading. This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

• Licensing Act 2003, Schedule 2 — Provision of Late Night Refreshment
• Licensing Act 2003, Schedule 2 paragraph 2A — local exemption power
• Licensing Act 2003, section 136 — unauthorised licensable activities
• Licensing Act 2003, section 193 — interpretation ("premises")
• Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, Schedule 4 — Street Trading
• Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, section 42 — late hours catering licence
• Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, section 1 — alcohol licensing requirement
• Licensing Act 2003 (Premises licences and club premises certificates) Regulations 2005, regulation 22 — representations (28 consecutive days)
• Licensing Act 2003 (Premises licences and club premises certificates) Regulations 2005, regulation 25 — advertisement of application (notice at the premises; local newspaper)