event-runsheet

---
name: event-runsheet
description: Turns an event into a timed running order the team can follow without you standing in the room, with a named person responsible at every point, the get-in and get-out included, the pre-open check as a timed task, the licensing conditions written in as actions, the emergency page on one side of paper, and a one-page extract for each role. Use once the event is booked and before the rota goes up.
---

# A running order the team can follow without you in the room

You give this the event, the times, the room, the people you have rostered and your premises licence. You get back a single timed running order from the first delivery to the last light going off: who is responsible at each point and who deputises, the checks that have to happen before the doors open and who signs them, the licence conditions written in as tasks with times against them, the emergency page in language a nineteen year old can act on at 11pm, and a one-page extract per role so nobody is reading somebody else's job. It does not replace your fire risk assessment or your event risk assessment. It is what makes them happen on the night.

## What it does

1. **Build the sheet backwards from the hardest time on the licence, not forwards from the doors.** Find the immovable times first: the licensed finish for each activity, the music cut-off, last orders, drinking-up time, the hour the kitchen must stop serving, and the time the building has to be clear. Write those in first, in 24 hour time, then work backwards. Everything else is negotiable and those are not. Owners build runsheets forwards from doors open because that is the exciting end, and the result is a night that arrives at 23:15 with forty people, a band mid-encore and nobody having decided who says stop. The last ninety minutes of an event is where almost all of the licensing risk lives, so it is where the sheet starts.

2. **Put one named person in charge of the room at every minute of the sheet, with a named deputy, and make the handover a line on the sheet.** HSE's guidance on getting started is blunt about this: "whatever the scale of the event, make sure there is a clear understanding within the organising team of who will be responsible for safety matters." A rota tells you who is working. It does not tell you who decides. Write a column headed "in charge" and fill every row of it, including the rows where you personally intend to be in the room, because you will be behind the bar or in the kitchen. Where the person changes, put an explicit handover line at that time with what is handed over: the count on the door, the state of the cellar, anything already going wrong. An unwritten handover is how a problem that was being watched at nine stops being watched at ten.

3. **Put the get-in, the soundcheck and the get-out on the same sheet as the event, because that is where people get hurt.** HSE is specific that the phases either side matter: "Have appropriate management systems in place for each phase of the event to make sure health and safety risks are controlled", and it notes that high-risk activity happens during setup and breakdown even though fewer people are present. Lifting, working at height, trailing cable, a van reversing across a pavement, a wet floor nobody has signed. Give each of those a time, a named person and the control in one short sentence. The get-out at one in the morning, done by tired people who want to go home, is the part of the night with the fewest witnesses and the highest chance of an injury, and it is the part most runsheets stop before.

4. **Make the pre-open check a timed task with a named person and a written list, not a walk round.** Fix it at a time, typically thirty to sixty minutes before doors, and list the items as things to look at: fire exits clear and unlocked along their full route, extinguishers in place, emergency lighting working, the route from the stage to the exit clear, floor clear of cable, the till float, the first aid kit, the accident book, the refusals log, the ID scanner or the notice, tap water available, the capacity counter set to zero. HSE's guidance on managing an event puts the principle plainly: "Periodically, you should check your agreed methods for controlling risks and test them to make sure they are working and being followed", and notes that for small events a simple checklist is enough. Somebody signs it with a time. A check nobody signed did not happen, and on the night after an incident that is exactly the question.

5. **Write the mandatory licensing conditions into the sheet as actions, at the times they bite.** The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010 requires, among other things, that "The responsible person shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that staff on relevant premises do not carry out, arrange or participate in any irresponsible promotions", that "No alcohol is dispensed directly by one person into the mouth of another (other than where that other person is unable to drink without assistance by reason of a disability)", that "Free tap water is provided on request to customers where it is reasonably available", that an age verification policy applies to anyone appearing under 18, and that the smaller measures are available and customers are made aware of them. These are not background law on an event night, they are the things a themed evening quietly breaks. Turn each into a line: who briefs the bar on the promotion wording, where the jugs of water are and who refills them, who is checking ID and what they do with a refusal, and where the measures notice is displayed.

6. **Count the room, and decide before the night who counts and who is allowed to say no at the door.** Put the licensed capacity at the top of the sheet in bold, put a clicker or a counted ticket system in one named person's hands, and write the number at which entry pauses rather than the number at which it stops, so there is room to react. Where the event needs door staff, they must hold an SIA licence: the Security Industry Authority is "the regulator of the UK's private security industry" and door supervision is one of the licensable activities under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, and unlike most security work the in-house exemption does not rescue you at licensed premises. Write the door supervisor's name and licence number on the sheet. Write who they escalate to. Write, in one sentence, what happens to a queue in the rain, because that decision made at 21:40 by whoever is nearest is the decision that creates an obstruction on the pavement.

7. **Give the emergency page its own side of paper, in the words a frightened person can follow.** Article 15 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 requires the responsible person to "establish and, where necessary, give effect to appropriate procedures, including safety drills" for serious and imminent danger, to nominate a sufficient number of competent persons to implement evacuation, and to ensure people can "stop work and immediately proceed to a place of safety". Competent means having "sufficient training and experience or knowledge and other qualities to enable him properly to implement the evacuation procedures". So the page says: who stops the music and how, the exact words said over the PA, which exits are used, who sweeps which room including the toilets and the smoking area, where the assembly point is, who calls 999 and who meets them, who has the guest or ticket count, and who is not allowed to go back in. Names, not job titles, with the deputy beside each.

8. **Put the music cut-off and the noise plan on the sheet as times, with a person and a level.** Where a venue relies on the deregulated position, section 177A of the Licensing Act 2003 applies only where the audience is "no more than 500 persons" and the music is "between 8am and 11pm on the same day", so 23:00 is a hard edge and the sheet needs a line at 22:45 saying who tells the band. Beyond licensing there is noise nuisance: section 79(1)(g) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 makes "noise emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance" a statutory nuisance, which is the route a neighbour complaint takes. Put on the sheet: who owns the volume, when the doors and windows close, when the outside area shuts, who walks to the nearest houses and listens at a stated time, and who talks to a neighbour who comes to the door. A named person walking outside at 21:30 has prevented more licence reviews than any amount of soundproofing.

9. **Cut the sheet into one page per role, then diarise the debrief before the night happens.** Nobody reads a four page runsheet at 20:00. Produce one page each for the person in charge, the bar, the kitchen, the door and the performer's liaison, each showing only their own rows plus every immovable time and the emergency page. Put the full sheet on the wall in the staff area. Then fix the debrief: HSE's guidance says "It is also good practice to debrief after an event and certainly after any significant incident/emergency", so put a time in the diary for the following day with the same named people, and three questions ready. What ran late and why, what did somebody improvise because the sheet did not cover it, and what nearly went wrong. Write the answers on the sheet itself and file it, because next time this event runs the corrected sheet is the whole preparation.

## Then it checks

1. Every row of the running order has a time in 24 hour format, a named person and a named deputy, and there is no minute between the first arrival and the final lock-up with nobody in charge.
2. Every immovable time taken from the premises licence appears on the sheet, and the sheet contains no activity scheduled past the licensed hour for that activity.
3. The get-in, the soundcheck and the get-out each appear with their own rows, times and named people, and the sheet does not end at the last song.
4. The pre-open check exists as a timed task with a written list and a signature line, and every item on it is something a person can look at and confirm rather than a general instruction.
5. The emergency page names individuals rather than roles, states who stops the music, who sweeps which area including toilets and outside areas, where the assembly point is and who calls 999, and it fits on one side.
6. Every mandatory licensing condition, the capacity, the door arrangements including any SIA licence number, and the music cut-off appear as timed actions with an owner, not as background notes.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. A line telling a named person to stop the band is shown to that person before the sheet is issued.
- Never write a capacity, a licensed hour or a licence condition from memory or from a previous event. Every one is copied from the current premises licence in front of you, and a licence that could not be produced is recorded as missing rather than assumed.
- Never write a role where a name belongs. "The duty manager" is not a person at 23:10, and the emergency page is the place this matters most.
- Never present the runsheet as a risk assessment. It carries out decisions already made in the fire risk assessment and the event risk assessment. If those do not exist, say so on the sheet and stop, because a running order built on an assessment nobody has done is a schedule with confidence added.
- Never state an expected attendance, a typical bar spend or a benchmark staffing ratio. Staff the night from the capacity, the licence and the owner's own experience of their own room.
- Never leave a task on the sheet with no owner, and never resolve a missing owner by writing "all staff". A task owned by everyone is owned by nobody at the moment it matters.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own premises licence, fire risk assessment and event risk assessment, and for their licensing officer, fire risk assessor or environmental health officer to check. It puts published requirements into a timed order. It is not a risk assessment, it is not legal advice, and it does not certify that the event is safe or compliant.

## Built from
- Health and Safety Executive, "Event safety: Getting started", https://www.hse.gov.uk/event-safety/getting-started.htm, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the requirement for a clear understanding of who is responsible for safety matters in step 2, and the point that planning should be proportionate to scale and risk.
- Health and Safety Executive, "Event safety: Managing an event", https://www.hse.gov.uk/event-safety/managing-an-event.htm, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: management systems for each phase including setup and breakdown in step 3, the periodic checking of controls in step 4, and the debrief in step 9.
- The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 15, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1541/article/15/made, read 16 September 2026: the procedures for serious and imminent danger, the nomination of competent persons and the definition of competence, which is step 7.
- The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1541/article/9/made, read 16 September 2026: the duty to make a suitable and sufficient risk assessment and to review it after a significant change, which is why the rules refuse to let the runsheet stand in for one.
- The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010, Schedule, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/860/schedule/made, read 16 September 2026: the irresponsible promotions condition, the dispensing condition, free tap water, the age verification policy and the smaller measures, all turned into timed tasks in step 5.
- Licensing Act 2003, section 177A, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/section/177A, read 16 September 2026: the 500 person and 8am to 11pm conditions that make 23:00 a hard edge in step 8.
- Environmental Protection Act 1990, section 79, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/43/section/79, read 16 September 2026: "noise emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance" at section 79(1)(g), the basis for the noise walk in step 8.
- Security Industry Authority, "About us", https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/security-industry-authority/about, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026, and the Private Security Industry Act 2001, Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2001/12/schedule/2, read 16 September 2026: door supervision as a licensable activity and the guarding of licensed premises, in step 6.
- Home Office, "Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025: Overarching Factsheet", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/terrorism-protection-of-premises-act-2025-factsheets/terrorism-protection-of-premises-act-2025-overarching-factsheet, page updated 24 July 2026, read 16 September 2026: the standard tier threshold of 200 or more individuals, the requirement for "appropriate public protection procedures", the regulator and the implementation period of "at least 24 months" from 3 April 2025, which is why the emergency page in step 7 is built now rather than when the duties commence.

# event-runsheet

## You are given
The event: its name, its date, the room or rooms used, the licensed capacity for each, and the layout if it differs from normal trading. The premises licence, as a document or typed-out extracts, showing the permitted hours for each licensable activity, the capacity, and every condition including any music, door supervision or outside area condition. The rota for the night with real names, start and finish times, and roles. The suppliers and performers with their arrival, soundcheck, set and departure times. The owner's fire risk assessment and event risk assessment, or a statement that one or both do not exist. The existing pre-open check list if the venue has one. The door arrangements, including the name and SIA licence number of any door supervisor. The emergency arrangements as the owner states them: who stops the music, the PA wording, the exits used, the sweep areas, the assembly point, who calls 999. And the judgements already made by Claude and supplied to you: the immovable times taken from the licence, who is in charge at each point with their deputy, the music cut-off time, the capacity pause number, and the task list with owners.

## Produce
Write into a `./event-runsheet-output/` folder:

1. `runsheet.csv` with these columns in this order: `row_no`, `time_24h`, `phase`, `task_verbatim`, `owner_name`, `deputy_name`, `in_charge_of_room`, `immovable`, `source_of_time`, `role_pages`. `row_no` is sequential in time order from the first arrival to the final lock-up. `phase` is exactly one of `get-in`, `soundcheck`, `pre-open check`, `doors`, `event`, `last orders`, `wind down`, `get-out`, `lock-up`. `immovable` is `yes` or `no`, and every `yes` names the licence line it came from in `source_of_time`. `role_pages` lists the roles whose one-page extract this row appears on, separated by semicolons.
2. `in-charge-cover.csv` with columns: `from_time_24h`, `to_time_24h`, `in_charge_name`, `deputy_name`, `handover_row_no`, `gap`. Built by walking `runsheet.csv` in time order. Any minute between the first arrival and the final lock-up with no named person in charge produces a row with `gap` set to `yes`, and every such row is listed in `gaps.md`.
3. `pre-open-check.md` - the timed check as a list of items each with a box, a named person and a signature and time line at the foot. Every item is copied verbatim from the supplied list or from the judgement supplied. Nothing is added.
4. `licence-tasks.csv` with columns: `condition_ref`, `condition_verbatim`, `task_on_the_sheet`, `runsheet_row_no`, `owner_name`, `time_24h`, `present_on_sheet`. One row per condition on the premises licence and one per mandatory condition supplied. Any row with `present_on_sheet` set to `no` is listed in `gaps.md`.
5. `emergency-page.md` - one side of paper: who stops the music and how, the PA wording verbatim as supplied, the exits used, the sweep areas with a named person each including toilets and any outside or smoking area, the assembly point, who calls 999, who meets the emergency services, who holds the head count, and the deputy for each name. Every name is a person. Any role supplied without a name is written as `NAME NEEDED` and listed in `gaps.md`.
6. `role-pages/` - one Markdown file per role, named `<role>.md`, each containing only that role's rows from `runsheet.csv`, plus every row where `immovable` is `yes`, plus the contents of `emergency-page.md`. One file per role named in the rota.
7. `debrief.md` - the dated debrief sheet with the three questions, the named attendees and a blank answer area under each: what ran late and why, what somebody improvised because the sheet did not cover it, and what nearly went wrong.
8. `gaps.md` - a numbered list of: every minute with nobody in charge; every task with no owner or with the owner written as a role rather than a name; every licence condition not present on the sheet; any activity scheduled past the licensed hour for that activity; a missing fire risk assessment; a missing event risk assessment; a missing premises licence; a missing SIA licence number where door supervision is required; any `NAME NEEDED` on the emergency page; and any row whose time has no source where `immovable` is `yes`.

## Rules
- Codex sequences, cross-checks, counts and records. It never decides who is in charge, never sets a cut-off time, never writes a task, never writes emergency wording, and never judges whether the staffing is enough. Those arrive with the input.
- Never write a capacity, a licensed hour or a licence condition that was not supplied. A missing value is written as `not supplied` and listed in `gaps.md`.
- Never write "all staff", "the team", "the duty manager" or any other role in an owner or deputy column. If the input supplies a role rather than a name, record it verbatim and flag it.
- Never fill a gap in the in-charge cover by extending the nearest person's hours. Report the gap.
- Never write a staffing ratio, an expected attendance or a benchmark of any kind into any file.
- Never state or imply that the event is safe, that the venue is compliant, or that the runsheet satisfies a risk assessment duty. Where either assessment is missing, `runsheet.csv` is still produced and the absence is item one in `gaps.md`.
- Times are 24 hour with a leading zero. Dates are DD Month YYYY. Money, where it appears, is in GBP with the pound sign. British English throughout.
- Every quoted task, condition and PA line is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- No em dash characters in any file you write. Use a comma, a full stop or the word "and". A supplied line containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own premises licence, fire risk assessment and event risk assessment, and for their licensing officer, fire risk assessor or environmental health officer to check. It is not a risk assessment, it is not legal advice, and it does not certify that the event is safe or compliant.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written and the row count of each CSV. The number of runsheet rows and the first and last times on the sheet. The number of minutes with nobody in charge and the exact windows where that happens. The count of immovable times and whether each one traces to a licence line. The number of licence conditions supplied and how many appear on the sheet, naming any that do not. The number of role pages written and their file names. Any activity scheduled past a licensed hour, named with its row number and time. Whether the fire risk assessment and the event risk assessment were supplied. Every `NAME NEEDED` on the emergency page. The `gaps.md` item count.