FOI Licensing Documentation for Guildford Pride 2025 event
Case reference FOI2026/00425
Received 22 February 2026
Published 1 April 2026
Request
Please provide all internal and external documentation for the following in relation to Surrey Pride event held at Stoke Park on September 6th 2025:
1. All Vendor Vetting/ Approval Checklists asked for by Guildford Borough Council and supplied by Pride in Surrey and any subsequent correspondence.
2. All safeguarding Risk Assessments supplied to Guildford Borough Council by Pride in Surrey.
3. Internal Council correspondence regarding the public decency standards for licensed events.
4. Minutes from any meeting and any internal documentation relating to the approval of the license for the above event.
Response
Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please find the answers to your queries below:
Please provide all internal and external documentation for the following in relation to Surrey Pride event held at Stoke Park on September 6th 2025:
1. All Vendor Vetting/ Approval Checklists asked for by Guildford Borough Council and supplied by Pride in Surrey and any subsequent correspondence.
The Licencing Team are not required to approve or vet individual vendors at large events. The event organiser is required to have the appropriate Premises Licence for the event and to ensure that they adhere to our event hire terms and conditions, which can be found via the following website:
https://www.guildford.gov.uk/article/26817/Hire-a-park-for-a-public-event
I have also attached our Licensing Policy, which covered the period 2021 to 2026, for your reference.
This Policy has recently been reviewed and there is a draft version available on our website for the period 2026 to 2031:
https://www.guildford.gov.uk/Licensing2026
2. All safeguarding Risk Assessments supplied to Guildford Borough Council by Pride in Surrey.
Please find attached a copy of Pride in Surrey’s safeguarding policy, which was supplied to us in April 2025. Please also find attached a copy of their event management plan, which details the relevant risk assessments and the controls set up to address these.
3. Internal Council correspondence regarding the public decency standards for licensed events.
A search of Council wide correspondence for the period 1st January 2020 to 1st April 2026 for the terms ‘public decency’, ‘public decency standards’ and ‘public decency standards for licensed events’ has only brought up three incidents of these terms having been used – one was in a complaint received from a resident in January 2020, which related to language used by a Ward Councillor on social media; the second was in a complaint about the 2025 Pride in Surrey event received in January 2026 from a resident; the third was in the FOI received from yourself on 23/02/2026.
I have also queried with our Licencing Team whether ‘public decency standards’ is a topic they have had any internal correspondence about, or indeed any discussion about, with regards to licenced events and they have confirmed that this is not a matter that has ever been raised within the team.
Therefore, based on the above, I can only conclude that there is no internal council correspondence specifically relating to ‘public decency standards for licensed events’.
4. Minutes from any meeting and any internal documentation relating to the approval of the license for the above event.
The licence was granted automatically as there were no representations to the application and therefore no meeting was required. I have attached the email correspondence which related to the process that the Licencing Team followed in relation to the licence approval.
Yours sincerely,
FOI Team
Guildford Borough Council
Documents
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