England and Wales had an estimated 968,400 personal alcohol licences, 227,300 premises licences and 12,500 club premises certificates as at 31 March 2026. The Home Office reported the figures in its annual licensing statistics, published on 1 October 2026. About 10,600 premises also held 24-hour alcohol licences at that date. These numbers refer to different legal permissions and should not be added together as a count of businesses. A premises may fall under more than one authorisation, while personal licences are issued to individuals rather than venues.

A personal licence authorises an individual to supply alcohol or authorise its supply under a premises licence. A premises licence can permit a location to sell alcohol, provide regulated entertainment or offer late-night refreshment. Qualifying members’ clubs, including some sports or social clubs, need a club premises certificate if they plan to sell or supply alcohol. These permissions have different terms and uses. The 968,400 personal licences therefore do not mean that the same number of unique people were actively working on that date, and 227,300 premises licences are not necessarily 227,300 trading businesses.

The Home Office says personal licences generally accumulate over time because they remain valid unless surrendered, suspended or revoked. A premises licence may also remain on the record after a venue stops trading if the holder has not surrendered it. Growth in licence counts therefore does not, by itself, show that new venues opened or that employment in the alcohol sector increased. Birmingham had the highest number of personal licences, at 14,060, followed by North Yorkshire with 12,879 and Leeds with 11,858. Westminster had the highest count of premises licences among local authorities, at 3,993.

The geographic distribution also shows why a national total is not enough to describe the pattern. London had 33,769 premises licences and the South East had 32,376, while the North East had the lowest regional total, at 10,072. When measured relative to population, Wales had the highest rate, with 446 premises licences per 100,000 people; the East of England had the lowest, at 320. Wales had the second-lowest raw total but the highest population-adjusted rate, illustrating how population size affects comparisons. These rates do not mean that every licence related to a venue that was open or trading.

A total of 184 cumulative impact areas were in force across 71 licensing authorities. These are places where an authority has identified saturation of licensed premises and applies a special policy to new applications or variations. In 2024, there were 183 such areas across 76 authorities. The comparison therefore shows slightly more designated areas but fewer authorities using them. Nine authorities had a late-night levy, which lets councils collect a contribution from alcohol suppliers operating between midnight and 6am to help meet policing costs. They reported more than £2.5 million in receipts, compared with £2.6 million in the year ending March 2024; one authority could not provide its collection amount.

An estimated 149,600 temporary event notices were given in the year ending 31 March 2026, about 2 percent more than in the year ending March 2024. A temporary event notice is used to notify a licensing authority about certain limited events that do not require a premises licence; it is not a permanent venue licence. The same year, an estimated 600 premises licence reviews were carried out, around 30 percent more than in 2024. Among 542 completed reviews for which missing data were not estimated, 46 percent resulted in revocation or withdrawal, 12 percent in suspension, 7 percent in no further action and the remaining 35 percent in added or changed licence conditions.

More than one reason can be recorded for a review, so the reason counts do not add up to the number of reviews. Crime and disorder featured in 442 reviews, public safety in 138, public nuisance in 137 and protection of children in 118. Crime and disorder was cited in 82 percent of reviews. Three premises licences had conditions imposed because of concerns about spiking, compared with nine in the year ending March 2024. These are administrative outcomes and stated reasons for reviews; they do not directly measure the prevalence of offences or harm in licensed settings.

The headline totals include estimates for four licensing authorities that supplied no data for 2025–26, plus estimates where authorities could not report particular categories. The Home Office rounds headline counts to the nearest hundred and calculates percentage changes from underlying unrounded estimates. Data were not collected in some years to reduce local-authority reporting burden, and 2020 information was not collected because of the pandemic. The series is therefore not a complete annual run for every year, and long gaps should not be described as uninterrupted year-on-year trends. Although the statistics are based on local administrative returns, coverage and missing responses affect comparability.

The release covers permissions and local-authority powers under the Licensing Act 2003 in England and Wales. It should not be read as a UK-wide total including Scotland or Northern Ireland. Personal licences, premises licences, club certificates, temporary notices and cumulative impact areas are distinct concepts with different denominators and operational meanings. The safest conclusion is that the data describe the scale of permissions on record and some licensing-authority activity at the end of March 2026. They do not count active pubs, restaurants, events or alcohol sales. A fuller assessment would pair them with independent information on whether premises were trading, sales activity and local population.