If you have a criminal record, it does not necessarily mean that you will not get a licence. However, if you do have any convictions, warnings, cautions, absolute/conditional discharges, admonishments or charges awaiting trial for offences we will make our decision according to:

• Whether the offences are included in the lists of offences on pages 61 to 78 of Get Licensed;
• The classification of seriousness of the offences (the lists on pages 61 to 78 of Get Licensed classify offences according to degrees of seriousness);
• The actual sentence or disposal given to you for the offence; and
• How recent the offences were.*

* The recency of an offence is measured against the date we make the decision to grant or refuse your licence. Where reference is made in Get Licensed to a time "before your licence application" (as in the paragraph below) or 'in the past xx years', the date we use for the calculation is the date on which we make the decision, not the date you originally submitted your application.

You will not get a licence unless you have been free of the sentence restrictions for a conviction, for at least 12 months before your licence application or for up to five years where we consider the offence to be serious and where you received a custodial sentence.

By "free of sentence restrictions" for a conviction which resulted in a custodial sentence, we mean that we will start counting the time elapsed from the end of the sentence - not from the date when you were sentenced or when the offence or offences were committed.

For example, if you have been convicted of an offence and spent time in custody, the date for deciding whether the offence is still relevant for licensing purposes is the date after the sentence would have ended. Even if you were released early, we will still regard the offence as relevant up until and including the final date when the sentence restrictions would have ended had the full term been served; the sentence expiry date (SED).

We will pay special attention to offences involving violence, dishonesty, terrorism, weapons, drugs, criminal damage and sexual offences.

We also consider the effects of rehabilitation on assessing your eligibility for a licence, and in some circumstances, will treat cautions, warnings, absolute/conditional discharges and admonishments on record more leniently than convictions.

Where we judge it necessary to refuse your licence we will write to you to inform you of our decision.

Charges awaiting trial

If, when we process your application, there are outstanding charges against you for relevant offences, we will wait until the courts have determined the outcome of the charges before making a decision.

Ex-juvenile Offenders

Offences which you committed as a juvenile will be taken into account in a similar way to adult offences. Criminal records gained between the ages of 10 and 12 are considered spent unless they relate to offence(s) that were originally considered serious by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Any serious offences on record between the ages of 12 and 15 will be subject to our assessment grid, as will all relevant offence(s) on record for those aged 16 and over.

More information on the SIA's criminality criteria > >

I have no convictions > >