Incident Report
A structured record of an unusual or serious event at a venue, used for internal review, police investigation, and licensing compliance.
A venue incident report is a structured record of an unusual or serious event at the premises: an assault, a drink spiking, a theft, a medical emergency, an ejection, or any other event that staff judge significant. Most premises licences include a condition requiring an incident log. Police, licensing officers, and prosecutors rely on incident reports as evidence. A well-built incident reporting system protects the venue at review and supports prosecutions when staff or customers are victims of crime.
Key Points
- Incident reports are required by most premises licences and are used by police and licensing.
- Capture date, time, location, type, description, people, witnesses, severity, evidence, and follow-up.
- Use append-only amendments rather than overwriting records.
- Digital structured forms hold up better at review than handwritten incident books.
- Tie incident reports to door supervisor shifts and CCTV references for fast follow-up.
What an incident report needs to capture
At minimum: the date and time the incident started, the date and time it ended, the precise location within the venue, the incident type (from a category list such as assault, theft, drink spiking, ejection), a free-text description, the people involved, witness details, the injury severity, which emergency services were called, the police crime or reference number if assigned, whether CCTV footage exists, evidence collected, immediate actions taken, whether the area was secured, follow-up required, and a priority classification.
Append-only amendments
Incident reports are often updated after submission: the police give you a crime reference, a witness comes forward, CCTV is recovered, an injury turns out to be more serious. The right way to handle updates is append-only amendments: the original record stays exactly as written, with timestamped notes appended for each amendment showing who added what and when. Licensing committees and courts treat tamper-resistant records very differently from records that have been overwritten after the fact.
Why structured digital records win
Free-text incident books fail in three ways: handwriting can be illegible, pages get lost or damaged, and entries can be amended without an audit trail. A digital system with structured fields, append-only amendments, and exportable date-range reports is the standard licensing committees expect. It also speeds up police follow-up dramatically: where a paper book might take days to find an entry, a digital system filters by date, location, type, and reference number in seconds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an incident book legally required?
Most premises licences include a condition requiring an incident log either explicitly or implicitly through other conditions (Challenge 25 enforcement, drug policies, dispersal). Even where the licence does not explicitly require it, maintaining one is the standard expected by licensing committees.
How long should incident records be retained?
There is no single legal retention period. Practical guidance: retain records for at least seven years to support any civil claim. Where an incident relates to a child or vulnerable adult, retain in line with safeguarding policies. Where an incident has triggered a prosecution, retain for the life of the case plus any appeals.
Should I report incidents to the police?
Some incidents must be reported by law (assault, weapons offences, drug-related deaths, safeguarding concerns). Others are at the operator's discretion but reporting builds the relationship with the local police licensing team. Even when you do not formally report, recording the incident in your own log is essential.
Can incident records be edited after submission?
Best practice is no. Use append-only amendments instead: the original record stays locked and any updates become timestamped notes attributed to the staff member who added them. This protects evidential weight at licensing review and in court.
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