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child licensing
This page explains what a licence is and how it is obtained. Please do not worry if it looks confusing – we can handle everything for you but it is important everyone understands why these are required and what the penalties are.
Links to the documents referred to and further information regarding the legislation are at the bottom of this page.
The law states that all children from babies through to teens up until the end of their full-time education, require a Child Performance Licence for every job they are booked for. Any child who is over the age of 16yrs and is no longer in full-time education does not need a licence.
The licence is raised through the child’s local council. Most councils require a licence per job to be raised from scratch which can take anything from 48 hours to 21 days, depending on the council’s own lead times. Once the licence is raised, the child's council then advise the council in the area the job is happening, who have the right to perform 'spot checks' to make sure all the children on the job are licensed correctly and the client is complying with child employment laws.
The responsibility for ensuring all children on a shoot are licensed lies with the client. Penalties for not licensing a child include a fine of up to £1000 and/or a prison sentence of up to three months. Children without a licence in place are also not insured or protected.
CLIENTS
Please give us as much notice as possible when considering children for stills or filming to allow enough time for us to raise the licenses required.
UK Shoots...
The above licensing requirements for shoots in the UK can be handled by us for a nominal admin fee of £30 per licence. If you would prefer to licence the child yourself, please contact us and we will give you details of the child’s local council.
Shoots outside the UK...
Licences for shoots happening outside the UK must be issued by a magistrate and require a letter from the child’s GP as well as additional paperwork and checks. Again, we can handle these for you, but the admin fee will be quoted per job, depending on the requirements.
PARENTS
You do not need to contact your council, all licencing is handled by us. As soon as your child is accepted onto the agencies books you must make it your priority to upload their birth certificate and Part 2 of the licence application onto their profile so we have all this ready for when they are requested.
If you did not do this when you completed their profile, please do it now. You will need to download, complete and sign Part 2 and also have a digital copy/photograph of their birth certificate.
- Please digitally fill in Part 2 only of the licence form (ignore Part 1) and sign but not date the medical declaration form.
- Please do not sign where it says ‘signature of applicant’ as you are not the applicant.
- If your child has not done anything before, you can ignore anything referring to previous work or licences. If your child has been working with another agency however, you must fill in any previous jobs done in the last 12 months.
- Please do not complete the School Permission Form unless you are asked to by your booker as this is completed for each individual booking and signed by the child’s Head Teacher.
- You do not need to obtain a letter from your GP unless required for licensing jobs shooting outside the UK.
If you have any problems with filling the form in digitally, please print it off, complete it by hand and post it to our Norwich office, or use an app called ‘CamScanner’ to scan and email it to [email protected].
DOCUMENTS & LINKS
THE NATIONAL NETWORK FOR CHILDREN IN EMPLOYMENT AND ENTERTAINMENT
NNCEE PERMITTED HOURS OF WORK TABLE
Part 1 (for agency/client) - PDF
Part 1 (for agency/client) - Word
CAMSCANNER APP to allow you to scan & share
ADOBE APP to allow you to sign a pdf
