Licensing — the service line

What a trading company needs before it can legally operate, what it costs them, what it costs us to do, and what we charge. Researched against gov.uk and the regulators' own fee schedules, 21–22 August 2026. The cohort-facing version of this research lives in the Blackpool pack; this one is about selling it.
Why this works as a service. None of these are difficult to apply for. They are difficult to remember, easy to get subtly wrong, and expensive to discover late. The value is not the form-filling — it is knowing which ones apply, applying in the right order, and having the prerequisites already in place. Every one of them wants a company number and a UTR, and most want a VAT number, so the compliance work we are already doing is the thing that makes them possible.

Qualifying — four questions that route every client

Ask these on any onboarding call. They take two minutes and they identify every licence on this page.

1 · Do they get paid by another business for construction work?
→ CIS gross payment status. Without it the payer withholds 20% of every invoice — 30% if they are not CIS-registered at all. This is the highest cash-value item here and it is free to apply for.
2 · Do they sell, store, handle or move food — including as a broker with no food on site?
→ Food business registration. Free, cannot be refused, 28 days before trading. Catches far more businesses than people expect, including online-only sellers and office-based brokers.
3 · Do they sell alcohol to other businesses for resale?
→ AWRS. 45 days' notice and approval must be granted before trading. Trading without it is an offence. Their buyers also have a duty to check they hold it.
4 · Do they move goods in or out of the UK?
→ EORI. Free and usually immediate — but it asks for the UTR, so it sits behind the tax registrations. Sequence it with VAT and both land together.
One more, asked differently. Do they carry, broker or deal in anyone else's waste? Most people answer no and are wrong — a trade that removes waste from a customer's site as part of the job is an upper-tier carrier, not the free lower tier. It is £154 and three years, and getting the tier wrong is the single most common error on this page.

What each one costs and pays

The detail

CIS gross payment status Highest cash value here

Any construction subcontractor paid by a contractor. Not a licence — a status HMRC grants.
Their cost Free
Applied via Government Gateway, CIS online service
Reviewed Annually by HMRC
Difficulty Easy to apply, easy to fail

Three tests, all of which must pass. Business test — run in the UK, largely through a bank account. Turnover test — net construction turnover excluding VAT and materials of at least £30,000 per director, or £100,000 for the company. Compliance test — every return filed and every payment made on time, including VAT since 6 April 2024. A single late filing can fail it.

This is where the compliance work sells itself. The compliance test is precisely the record that our confirmation statements, accounts and VAT returns create. A client who has been late on everything cannot get gross status until the record is clean — so the filing fee is not just penalty avoidance, it is what unlocks a fifth of their cash flow. On £200,000 of construction turnover that is £40,000 sitting with HMRC instead of in the business.

Sources: gov.uk Construction Industry Scheme guidance; CIS 340.

Food business registration Free · cannot be refused

Anyone who sells, cooks, stores, handles, prepares or distributes food — including office-based brokerage with no food on site, and online-only sellers.
Their cost Free
Notice 28 days before trading
Applied via register.food.gov.uk
Refusable? No — registration, not approval

Every site registers with its own local authority. Scotland runs a separate process through Food Standards Scotland. The guidance is explicit that you should not register too early — wait until 28 days before actually trading.

Source: gov.uk food business registration.

Alcohol — AWRS Offence to trade without it

Anyone selling alcohol to other businesses for resale — wholesalers, importers, and retailers making regular business-to-business sales.
Their cost No fee published
Notice 45 days before trading
Approval Must be granted before you start
Difficulty Fit-and-proper test on the business

Two things clients routinely miss. Approval must be granted before trading, not merely applied for — 45 days is the minimum notice, not a guarantee. And the buyer has a duty too: anyone buying alcohol for resale must check their supplier holds AWRS approval, repeat that check, and keep evidence of it. Incidental one-off sales and sales within a corporate group are exempt.

Source: gov.uk AWRS guidance; Excise Notice 2002. No application fee appears in the published guidance — treat as free but confirm before quoting.

MHRA Wholesale Dealer's Licence — WDA(H) Expensive and slow

Anyone wholesaling human medicines. A regulated authorisation with inspection, not a form.
New licence £6,295 — £2,159 application + £4,136 inspection
Annual £346, or £206 reduced rate
Timescale ~90 days, longer at peak
Applied via MHRA PCL portal

A Responsible Person is mandatory — a named individual with the qualifications and experience the regulator requires, available to the business. For most small operators that means hiring one, and that is the real cost rather than the fee. The reduced annual rate applies to GSL-only wholesalers, retail pharmacies where wholesaling is under 15% of turnover, and wholesalers under £35,000 of wholesale turnover.

We scope this; we do not deliver it. Our runbook prices the assessment and the referral, not the application — a WDA is specialist work and belongs with a consultancy that does it full time.

Source: MHRA current fees, applicable from 1 April 2025 (2025–2027 schedule).

Waste carrier, broker or dealer Tier is the trap

Anyone who transports, buys, sells or arranges the disposal of waste.
Upper tier £154, renew £105 every 3 years
Lower tier Free, no renewal
Applied via Environment Agency, needs a Gateway account
Timescale Days

Lower tier is only for the business's own waste. The moment a trade is engaged to remove someone else's waste — a plumber clearing a customer's site as part of the job — that is upper tier. Most people self-select the free option and are wrong.

Sources: Environment Agency waste carrier registration and published fees.

EORI number Free · usually immediate

Any business moving goods between Great Britain and other countries, GB and Northern Ireland, or NI and non-EU countries. Also needed to register for export licences.
Their cost Free
GB number Immediate, or up to 5 working days if HMRC run checks
XI number Within 5 days — required for Northern Ireland
Needs first UTR, business start date, SIC, plus VAT number if registered

It sits behind the tax registrations. The application asks for the UTR, so applying before that is through simply fails. This is the clearest example of why sequencing is the service: the form takes minutes, the prerequisites take weeks.

Source: gov.uk — apply for an EORI number, verified 22 August 2026.

Sequencing — the order that saves the most time

Company, then tax, then licence

Almost every licence here wants a company number and a UTR before it will process, and several want VAT. Applying out of order fails, and some regulators make you start again.

Work backwards from the trading date

Alcohol needs 45 days. Food needs 28. Pharmaceuticals about 90. A client who mentions it in week one is straightforward; one who mentions it the week before launch is not.

Post the slow requests on day one

The auth code and UTR letters travel while everything else proceeds. Same principle as the compliance queue — the programme is paced by how early the slow items go out.

Check the compliance record before promising CIS gross status

One late return fails the test. If the record is not clean, fixing it is the job, and it is worth more to the client than the licence application itself.

Never set a regulated SIC code without the licence conversation

Registering a company as an alcohol or pharmaceutical wholesaler while it holds no approval is a mismatch on the public register that invites precisely the wrong attention.

What we do and what we do not. We identify what applies, prepare the application, assemble the prerequisites and manage the timetable. The client submits, and the client holds the licence. We are not a licensing consultancy and we do not hold anyone's approval — for the MHRA route in particular we scope and refer rather than deliver. Quote it that way and the service is honest and repeatable.
Two figures to confirm before quoting. No AWRS application fee appears in the published guidance, which is good evidence it is free but not a positive statement that it is. And the MHRA fees are the 2025–2027 schedule — check the current one before pricing a pharmaceutical client, since a fee change would move the headline number by thousands.