Plota now has the largest free searchable licence database in the UK: 173,804 premises licences and club certificates in force, from 248 councils' licensing registers.* You can search them by postcode, town, council or premises name at plota.co.uk/licensing. Searching is free.
Plota is the first UK-wide land and planning intelligence platform to bring premises licences, live licensing applications and planning history together at individual addresses.
It builds on our HMO register search and nearly triples the licences on Plota: 263,230 business licences join 170,183 HMO licences.
A premises licence lets a pub, shop, restaurant, club or venue sell alcohol, serve hot food late at night or put on music and other entertainment. Each council keeps a register of them, with what each licence allows and often until what time.
The registers also list the new applications, and the changes asked for to existing licences, while the public can still comment on them. New applications are checked every day, and each whole register every week.
The map
The map shows licence applications and licensed premises together. Two switches above it, Applications and Premises, turn each on or off.
Applications are amber: a filled mark while the application is open, a ring once it is decided. Licensed premises are green, and a premises with an open application is a green pin with an amber ring. Zoomed out, the marks group into clusters, with the applications in each shown as an amber count; they split into single places as you zoom in.
The list beside the map follows the switches. Click a card and the map flies to that application or premises; each card links to its own page.
Open for comments keeps only the applications the public can still comment on, with the day comments close, and Closing soon sorts the nearest deadline first.
Late hours shades each premises by the latest hour it may sell alcohol, from midnight or earlier to past 3am, where the register gives the hours. Alcohol after midnight lists the premises licensed to sell alcohol past midnight. These are the hours a licence permits; a place may open for fewer.
Each council with a page of its own, such as Westminster, shows its licensed premises and its new applications on the same map.
Planning at the same address
Each licence page lists the planning applications at the same premises and elsewhere in the building, with the council's decision and a link to the application. Where a planning committee decided one, its decision is linked too.
Albert's Restaurant and Bar on Barlow Moor Road in Manchester may sell alcohol until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. Its page lists 5 planning applications at the premises since 2018, among them a two-storey side extension with a private dining space on the first floor, applied for in January 2025 and approved.
Alerts and My Home
Licensing comes through the alerts you already have. An area alert can add new licence applications and later hours to its digest, beside the day's planning applications. Follow a licence application to hear of its decision, a hearing or a change to it, and set a reminder 7, 3 or 1 days before comments close, or on the morning they close.
My Home lists licence applications and changes within 300 metres of your home beside the planning ones, with a Planning, Licensing or All filter. Set up an alert.
In the API
The API returns the same records: /v1/licensed-premises for licences in force, /v1/licensing-applications for applications, each licence's history, and /v1/licensing/changes, a feed of changes since a date. A call names a council, a postcode, a UPRN, a point with a radius or a box, and takes the map's filters. Add format=csv to any page for the same records as CSV. No personal details are served.
Each licence or application new to your account in a month counts as 2 records of your plan's monthly allowance. The licensing API reference lists every field and filter, and the integration guides show how to bring the records into Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, QGIS and other tools.
* The count is the premises licences and club premises certificates in force on the councils' public licensing registers, each place once. Event notices are never counted.