Food safety advice

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has confirmed that one-off events aren’t considered food businesses. However, you must still ensure that any food provided at the event is safe to eat. The FSA website provides more advice about providing safe food at street parties and other community events if you have any specific queries you can ask the food safety team for advice by contacting them at ehealth@easthants.gov.uk

Health & Safety advice

An event organiser has a duty to plan, manage and monitor the event to make sure that workers and the visiting public are not exposed to health and safety risks. Further information on safely running an event on the HSE website.

Electrical safety

If your venue offers outdoor hospitality it’s your responsibility to make sure that all outdoor electrical equipment is safe and regularly maintained to prevent danger. Electrical safety advice for hospitality venues.

Licensing

You may need to apply for a licence if you are selling alcohol, having regulated entertainment or late night refreshment. Please visit our dedicated licensing webpages for more information or contact our licensing team on licensing@easthants.gov.uk.

Road closures

Information about applying for a road closure for your event can be found on our dedicated webpage, along with the application which needs to be completed and returned to licensing@easthants.gov.uk.

Bouncy castles and other play inflatables - safety advice

Bouncy castles and other play inflatable can be fun however, serious incidents including tragic deaths have occurred where inflatables have collapsed or blown away in windy conditions. If you are planning to have a bouncy castle or other inflatable play device at your celebration you need to ensure that:

  • you use a reputable company
  • that the bouncy castle/inflatable has had its required annual inspection.
  • that the bouncy castle/inflatable is correctly setup including use of correct anchoring means
  • operated in a safe manner following any instructions provided with it.

Further advice and guidance for the safe use of a bouncy castle or other play inflatable on the HSE website.

Banners, posters, bunting

If you are planning to use banners, posters or bunting for your event you may need permission to put these up.

If you plan to put up any signs, which may be attached to lamp columns then permission would be required from Hampshire County Council’s Streetlighting Contractor, contact tpa@sse.com

If you would like to use any bunting, banners or decorative flags, you will need to apply for a license from Hampshire Highways.

Think Green

We are encouraging everyone to think about how they can make their event as sustainable as possible.

This could include using social media instead of paper posters, asking everyone to bring their own cups to picnics and tea parties, going plastic free and having dedicated places at the events for people to recycle waste.

Eventbrite has a helpful article with more useful tips on how to keep your event sustainable.

The Purple Guide

The Purple Guide has been written by The Events Industry Forum in consultation with the events industry. Its aim is to help those event organisers who are duty holders to manage health and safety, particularly at large-scale music and similar events.