Do child performers need a licence for an amateur production?

It depends, and only your local authority can tell you. Section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963 requires a licence for a child of compulsory school age taking part in a performance where the audience is charged, or which takes place on licensed premises, or which is broadcast or recorded for public exhibition. Section 37(3) sets out an exemption, and it is important to read how it is built. It opens by requiring that no payment in respect of the child taking part, other than for defraying expenses, is made to the child or to anyone else. That no-payment condition is preliminary to the whole of subsection (3), so it applies whichever of the two limbs that follow you are relying on. Then one of those limbs must also be satisfied: either, under paragraph (a), in the six months preceding the performance the child has not taken part in other such performances on more than three days, or, under paragraph (b), the performance is given under arrangements made by a school or by a body of persons approved for the purpose by the Secretary of State or by the local authority in whose area the performance takes place. A group holding a body of persons approval that pays a child beyond expenses is therefore not exempt. Amateur societies often fall inside the exemption and often do not, and the assessment turns on facts specific to your production. Contact your council's child employment or performance licensing team early. gov.uk says applications should be made at least 21 days before the event.

What should an audition application form ask?

The useful ones ask for the named roles the person would like to be considered for, taken from the actual character list of the show rather than a free text box. Beyond that: previous experience in outline, voice type or range if it is a musical, what they intend to perform on the day, a contact number, any access requirements or adjustments they need, and an emergency contact. The single most valuable question is unavailability across the whole rehearsal and performance period, asked before casting rather than after. For anyone under 18 you also need a parent or guardian as the contact, and you should be collecting far less about them than you probably are. Ask only what you will actually use to make a decision.

How do we cast fairly in an amateur society?

Fairness is mostly a process question rather than a taste question. Agree written criteria before anybody auditions, so the panel knows what it is assessing. Keep the panel and the format consistent across every candidate, including anybody seen at a catch-up session. Take short written notes against the criteria for each person as you go. Agree in advance how a decision gets made when the panel disagrees, because a group that has not agreed that will fall back on whoever argues hardest. Declare conflicts of interest where a panel member is related to a candidate. None of this guarantees everyone will be happy, but it means you can explain the decision afterwards, which is the thing you will actually be asked to do.

How long should we keep audition applications?

Set a period, write it down, and apply it. The storage limitation principle in UK GDPR Article 5(1)(e) requires that personal data is kept no longer than necessary for the purpose, and Article 5(2) makes you accountable for justifying whatever period you choose. For people who were not cast, the purpose usually expires once casting is settled and any questions about the decision have been dealt with, so many groups delete unsuccessful applications a few months after casting. For people who were cast, the data feeds into rehearsal scheduling, contact details, medical and access information and safeguarding records, so it lives as long as the production and its aftermath. The failure mode is keeping everything forever in a shared drive because nobody wanted to press delete.

Should we ask about availability or unavailability?

Ask for unavailability. People answer it far more accurately. Asked to confirm availability, most respondents tick everything and mean it optimistically, because saying yes feels like enthusiasm and saying no feels like a reason not to cast them. Asked what dates they cannot do, the same people will name the wedding in June, the two weeks in August and the Tuesdays they work late. Ask it before casting, not after, and ask it against the actual rehearsal schedule and performance dates rather than in the abstract. Availability problems discovered after the cast list goes up are the single most common reason amateur productions have to recast.

Do we need a lawful basis to process audition applications?

Yes. Any information about an identifiable applicant is personal data under the UK GDPR, so you need a lawful basis under Article 6. Article 6 now provides seven bases: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task, legitimate interests, and recognised legitimate interests. The last of those was inserted as Article 6(1)(ea) by section 70(2)(b) of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and came into force on 5 February 2026, but it covers only a closed list of purposes in a new Annex 1 such as crime prevention, safeguarding vulnerable individuals and emergencies, so it will rarely be the basis for running an audition. Information about health or disability is special category data and needs a separate Article 9 condition on top, and because adjustment requests very often reveal it, the safe default is to treat them that way unless you have established that a particular one does not. This is worth writing down once rather than working out under pressure.

Do auditions have to be accessible?

The Equality Act 2010 places a reasonable adjustments duty on service providers under Part 3 and on associations under Part 7, but which of those you are, if either, depends on how you are operating. Part 7 defines an association as a body with at least 25 members whose admission to membership is regulated by the association’s rules and involves a process of selection (section 107(2)), so a small informal group with open membership may fall outside it. A group holding open public auditions or selling tickets to the public may instead be providing a service under Part 3. Some arrangements sit in neither, and employment or occupation duties can apply where performers are paid. Work out which description fits your own situation rather than assuming. In practice the duty, where it applies, means the audition venue, the audition format and the information you send in advance all matter. The most effective single change is asking every applicant in advance whether they need any adjustments, with a plain question and a name to contact, rather than waiting for somebody to raise it on the day in front of a panel. What counts as reasonable depends on your circumstances, and a guide cannot make that assessment for you.

How should we tell people they have not been cast?

Personally where you can, promptly, and in a way that does not require them to read a public list to find out. Agree before auditions who sends the message and when, and send everybody the outcome on the same day so nobody learns it from somebody else first. Say clearly that they were not cast, thank them specifically, and stop. Avoid explaining the decision in detail unless you have agreed as a group what you will say, because inconsistent reasons from different panel members cause more damage than no reason at all. Never promise a role, a part in the chorus, or a place in a future production that has not actually been agreed.

Auditions and casting, for groups that have to see these people again.

Amateur societies, musical theatre groups, youth theatre, choirs and dance schools all run auditions, and almost all of them run auditions the way the last person ran them. A form somebody made in a hurry, a panel that changes composition halfway through the evening, a cast list on a noticeboard, and three weeks later the discovery that the person playing the lead is away for the whole of the second week of rehearsals.

This guide covers what to ask on an audition application and why the wording changes the answers, why unavailability is a better question than availability, how to run a panel you can explain afterwards, what to do about the people you do not cast, and the part that carries the most risk and gets the least attention: children performing, and when a local authority licence comes into it.

It is general information for UK organisers, not legal advice. Child performance licensing, safeguarding, equality duties and data protection all sit on top of one another here, and the right answer depends on facts only you know. Nothing here tells you whether your production needs a licence, and any source that claims to without knowing your circumstances is overreaching. For decisions that affect real children or real people, contact your local authority child employment team, your designated safeguarding lead, or a solicitor.

Last updated 19 July 2026.

Reviewed on 19 July 2026 against section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, the Children (Performances and Activities) (England) Regulations 2014, gov.uk guidance on performance licences for children, the Equality Act 2010, and the current text of the UK GDPR on legislation.gov.uk including the seventh lawful basis added by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing. Child performance rules differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and local authorities apply them differently. For decisions about your specific production, contact your local authority child employment team, your designated safeguarding lead, or a solicitor.

The short version.

Most audition problems are not casting problems. They are information problems that were created weeks earlier, on a form that asked the wrong questions in the wrong order, and that only became visible once the cast list went up and could not be quietly changed.

Four things do most of the work. Ask for the named roles from the actual show rather than inviting a free text answer. Ask what dates people cannot do, before you cast, not after. Agree the criteria and the decision process in writing before anybody walks into the room, so the panel is assessing the same thing all evening and you can explain the outcome afterwards. And ask about access requirements in advance, privately, rather than putting somebody in the position of raising it in front of a panel.

The part that carries real legal weight is children. A child of compulsory school age performing in certain circumstances may need a licence from their local authority under section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, and gov.uk says applications should be made at least 21 days before the event. There is an exemption in section 37(3), it starts with a condition that nobody is paid beyond expenses, and it is genuinely easy to misread. Ring your council before you announce the show, not after you have cast it.

An audition form is doing two jobs at once. It is collecting the information the panel needs to make a decision, and it is collecting the information the production team will need for the next four months if this person is cast. Most forms do the first job badly and forget the second entirely, which is why so many production teams spend the fortnight after casting chasing phone numbers and emergency contacts. Write the form once, properly, and it becomes the spine of your rehearsal admin rather than a piece of paper that gets filed and never opened again. The single biggest improvement most groups can make is replacing an open question about which parts somebody is interested in with a list of the actual named roles from the show, each individually selectable. This changes the quality of what comes back more than any other single edit.

Named roles from the actual character list, individually selectable, plus an option for chorus or ensemble only
Whether the person would accept a different role from the ones they have named, which saves an awkward conversation later
Previous experience in outline: recent productions, roles, and any relevant training, kept short
For a musical, voice type or comfortable range, and whether the person reads music
For dance-heavy shows, dance experience and styles, stated honestly rather than aspirationally
What they intend to perform at the audition, so the accompanist and the panel are not surprised
A mobile number as well as an email address, because rehearsal changes happen on the day
Access requirements or adjustments needed, with a named person to contact privately about them
Emergency contact, and for under-18s a parent or guardian as the primary contact throughout
Unavailability across the full rehearsal and performance period, covered in its own section below

Why listing the actual roles changes what you get back.

Almost every audition form ever written contains a box reading something like "which parts are you interested in?". It seems open and welcoming. What it produces is a pile of answers you cannot compare with each other.

Some people write one name. Some write "happy with anything", which is usually not true and is never useful. Some write a paragraph about how they have always wanted to play a particular role but would not want to put anybody out. Some leave it blank because they did not want to seem presumptuous. The panel then has to interpret all of that, which means the panel is guessing, and different panel members guess differently.

Listing the show's actual named roles and letting people tick as many as they want fixes several things at once. It tells applicants which roles are genuinely open, which is information a lot of them do not have. Quiet, less established members find it much easier to tick a box for a lead than to write down that they want it. You get a directly comparable set of answers, so you can see at a glance that eleven people would like the same role and nobody has put themselves forward for another one, which is a scheduling problem worth knowing about before the audition rather than during it. And it makes the ensemble an explicit, dignified choice rather than the default outcome for anybody who did not ask.

Add one more question underneath: would you accept a role you have not listed? A yes there is worth a great deal on the night the panel is trying to fill a part nobody wanted, and a no is worth even more, because it stops you offering somebody something they will resent and then withdraw from in week three.

More amateur productions are damaged by availability than by casting judgement. A recast in week four costs a group far more than a merely imperfect casting decision does, and it is almost always avoidable, because the information existed at the point of audition and nobody asked for it in a form that produced an honest answer. There are two changes to make and they are both small. The first is to ask for unavailability rather than availability. Asked to confirm the dates they can do, people tick everything, partly through optimism and partly because saying no to a rehearsal feels like handing the panel a reason to cast somebody else. Asked what dates they cannot do, exactly the same person will name the wedding, the fortnight in Cornwall, the shift pattern and the Tuesdays their child has swimming. It is the same information and the framing changes whether you get it. The second is to ask before casting rather than after. Availability collected after the cast list goes up is not information, it is a series of problems arriving one at a time.

Ask: which dates can you not do?

People answer this accurately. Naming a genuine conflict feels like being helpful rather than like admitting a weakness, so you get the truth.

Not: are you available for rehearsals?

Almost everybody says yes. It reads as a commitment question rather than a diary question, so it collects enthusiasm instead of facts.

And ask it before casting

Availability discovered after the cast list is published turns into recasting, resentment and a production team doing unpaid crisis management.

How to ask it so the answers are usable.

Publish the rehearsal pattern and the performance dates with the audition notice, then ask about unavailability against those specific dates rather than in the abstract. "Rehearsals are Tuesdays and Thursdays 7.30 to 10, from 6 January, plus Sunday afternoons from 15 February. Performance week is 21 to 25 April with a technical rehearsal on the Sunday. Which of these can you not make?" produces a list. "Are you free for rehearsals?" produces a yes.

Three follow-ups earn their place on the form. Are there any dates in performance week you cannot do? This is the one that matters most and it is worth asking separately, because people mentally treat performance week as non-negotiable and then remember the work trip. Is there anything you are waiting to hear about that might become a conflict? Holidays not yet booked, exam timetables not yet published, shift rotas not yet issued. And for anybody under 18, the school calendar: exam periods, residential trips and school production dates routinely collide with amateur rehearsal schedules and parents will know about them months in advance.

Then act on it before you cast. A schedule like the one above, two weeknights from January plus Sunday afternoons from the middle of February, comes to roughly forty calls before performance week. If the person you want for a lead cannot make a dozen of them, that is a decision to make deliberately, with the musical director and the choreographer in the room, not a surprise to discover in March.

Fairness at an audition is less about the quality of the panel's judgement than about the consistency of the conditions that judgement was formed in. The question you will be asked afterwards is never whether the panel had good taste. It is why this person and not that one, and the only way to answer it is to have assessed everybody against the same criteria, in the same format, with the same people in the room, and to have written something down at the time. Groups that skip this are not being unfair, but they are unable to demonstrate that they were fair, and in a small community organisation where everybody knows everybody that distinction disappears fast. Agree the criteria in writing before anybody auditions. Keep the panel the same throughout, including for anybody seen at a catch-up session, and if that is genuinely impossible then record who was present for whom. Take brief notes against the criteria as you go, because memory after twenty auditions is not evidence and is heavily weighted towards whoever went last.

Write the assessment criteria down before auditions open, and share them with applicants in advance
Keep the panel consistent. If somebody has to miss a session, record who saw whom rather than pretending otherwise
Use the same format for everybody: same length, same pieces, same warm-up, same information given beforehand
Take short written notes against the criteria for each candidate, at the time, not afterwards
Agree in advance how a split panel reaches a decision, otherwise the loudest voice becomes the process
Declare conflicts of interest where a panel member is related to or close to a candidate, and record what you did about it
Give everybody the same information before the day: what to prepare, how long, who will be there, what happens next and when
Do not discuss candidates in the corridor, the bar or a group chat that some of them are in

Notes are for the conversation you will have in a fortnight.

The reason to keep audition notes is not bureaucratic. It is that somebody who was not cast will ask why, or will tell other members that the decision was already made before the auditions started, and at that point the committee has two options. It can rely on the collective memory of three people who are now defensive, or it can look at what was written down on the night.

Keep the notes short, factual and about the audition rather than the person. "Strong in the upper range, struggled with the dialogue in the second scene" is a note. "Not really a leading man" is an opinion about somebody that you would not want read back to you. Write everything as though the person will eventually read it, because under the UK GDPR they have a right of access to their personal data and could ask for it. That right is a good discipline rather than a threat: notes written to that standard are the ones that actually help you explain a decision.

Then delete them when they have served their purpose. Notes about people who were not cast stop being useful once casting is settled and any questions have been dealt with. Keeping them indefinitely gives you a file of critical observations about your own members with no reason to exist.

A group that casts by committee needs to agree how the committee decides before it starts deciding. Unanimity, majority, director's final call after hearing the panel, musical director's veto on the singing roles: any of these can work and all of them fail when they are improvised at eleven at night by tired people who disagree. Agree it in writing at the same time as the criteria. Then agree the communications plan with the same care, because how people find out is remembered far longer than what they found out. Everybody should hear on the same day. Nobody should learn it from somebody else, from a noticeboard, or from a photograph of a cast list appearing in a group chat. Somebody named should be responsible for sending the messages, and that person should not be a member of the cast. The message itself should be short, clear and final: they were not cast, you are grateful they auditioned, and you would like to see them at the next one.

Decide how the decision gets made before auditions, including what happens when the panel splits
Send every outcome on the same day, with no gap in which some people know and others do not
Tell people who were not cast directly and individually before any cast list is published anywhere
Agree as a panel what, if anything, you will say about reasons, and say the same thing to everybody
Never promise a role, an ensemble place or a part in a future production that has not been agreed
Be honest about understudy and reserve arrangements rather than implying an opportunity that may not arrive
Offer a route to talk to a named person for anybody who wants to, and make it a real offer
Expect that some people will not come back, and treat that as feedback about the process rather than about them

Why "we will find you something" is a promise not to make.

It is said kindly and it is almost always regretted. Somebody the group values has auditioned for a lead, has not got it, and is visibly upset, and the natural instinct is to soften it with a suggestion that there will be something else. A place in the ensemble. A small named part that has not been cast yet. A role next time.

The problem is that the person hears a commitment and the panel meant an intention. Ensemble numbers get cut. The small part goes to somebody who auditioned specifically for it. Next season turns out to be a two-hander. And now the group has not simply disappointed somebody, it has broken its word, which is a different and much more corrosive thing in an organisation people belong to voluntarily.

The alternative is not coldness. It is precision. If there is an ensemble place available and you are offering it, offer it explicitly and let them decide. If there is not, say that there is not, say you would very much like them to audition next time, and mean it. In a group where people give up their evenings for years at a time, being reliably straight with people is worth more than being briefly comforting.

This is where an amateur production can find itself on the wrong side of a legal requirement without anybody having done anything they thought was unusual. The controlling provision is section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, which restricts a child of compulsory school age from taking part in certain performances unless a licence has been granted by the local authority for the area in which the child lives. The performances caught include those where the audience is charged, those taking place on premises licensed for the sale of alcohol or for public entertainment, and those broadcast or recorded with a view to public exhibition. In England the detail of applications, licence conditions, chaperones, education, hours and rest is set out in the Children (Performances and Activities) (England) Regulations 2014. Section 37(3) also contains an exemption, and this is where amateur groups most often assume they are covered without reading how it is put together. It is not two independent exemptions. Subsection (3) opens with a condition that applies to everything after it: no payment in respect of the child taking part, other than for defraying expenses, is made to the child or to another person. Only if that is satisfied do you go on to the two limbs, one of which must also apply. Paragraph (a) is the one that counts days rather than performances: in the six months preceding the performance, the child has not taken part in other performances caught by subsection (2) on more than three days. This is why it is commonly described as the four-day rule. Paragraph (b) covers a performance given under arrangements made by a school within the meaning of the Education Act 1996, or by a body of persons approved for the purposes of the section by the Secretary of State or by the local authority in whose area the performance takes place, which is the approval commonly referred to as a body of persons approval. Because the no-payment condition is preliminary to the whole of subsection (3), a group that holds a body of persons approval but pays a child anything beyond defraying expenses is not exempt. Whether your production falls inside the exemption depends on payment, on the number of days the child has performed in the preceding six months, on what the venue is licensed for, on whether the performance is being recorded, and on how your particular local authority applies the rules. This guide cannot tell you the answer and you should be wary of anybody who says they can. gov.uk states that the person in charge of running the event must apply to the child's local council, and that this should be done at least 21 days before the event, so the practical instruction is simple: contact the child employment or performance licensing team at the relevant council as soon as you know children will be involved, and long before you cast them.

What triggers the question

A child of compulsory school age performing where the audience pays, on licensed premises, or in something recorded or broadcast for public exhibition.

What the exemption turns on

No payment beyond expenses is required first, whichever limb you rely on. Then either performances on no more than three days in the preceding six months, or arrangements made by a school or an approved body of persons.

What to actually do

Ring the child employment team at the council where the child lives, early. gov.uk says apply at least 21 days ahead, and councils vary in what they need.

What this means in practice for a group casting children.

The rules above are the shape of the thing. Here is how groups get caught out by them, which is rarely through deliberate corner-cutting.

Assuming amateur means exempt. The exemption in section 37 is not an exemption for amateur groups as such. It requires first that nobody is paid anything beyond defraying expenses, and then that one of the two limbs applies. The first of those limbs counts days, not performances: no more than three days of caught performances in the six months before this one. A child who has been in a school show, a dance display and a pantomime already this year may have used those days up without anybody noticing, and a school or approved-body arrangement does not rescue a production that pays the child. Ask, do not infer.

Leaving it until the cast list is out. A licence application needs information from the parents, from the school, and from you, and gov.uk says to apply at least 21 days before the event. Councils differ in what they want and how quickly they turn it around, and school terms and holiday periods compress everything. If the first conversation with the council happens after casting, the timetable is already tight.

Not knowing which council to ask. The application goes to the council for the area where the child lives, not where the venue is. A youth production drawing children from three neighbouring authorities is dealing with three different teams, three sets of forms and three interpretations.

Forgetting the venue matters. Whether the performance is on premises licensed for alcohol or for public entertainment is part of the test. A group that normally plays a village hall and takes one performance to a licensed venue has changed the facts.

Forgetting the recording matters. Filming the show for a DVD, streaming it, or letting a local broadcaster in changes the analysis, and it is usually decided by somebody who has never seen the licensing question.

Assuming England's rules apply everywhere. The 2014 Regulations are for England. Wales has the Children (Performances and Activities) (Wales) Regulations 2015 and Scotland has the Children (Performances and Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2014, and Northern Ireland has its own regime. If you tour, check where you are going.

None of this is a reason to avoid casting children. It is a reason to make one phone call in the month you choose the show rather than the month you open it.

gov.uk states that where a child taking part in a licensed performance will not be with their parent, school teacher or home tutor, they must be supervised by a chaperone approved by the council. Chaperone approval is a separate process from the performance licence itself, it is granted by a local authority, and the Children (Performances and Activities) (England) Regulations 2014 deal with chaperones alongside education, hours, breaks and rest. Groups routinely discover this late, because the person who would naturally do the job is a parent volunteer who has always done it and has never been approved by anybody. Separately from licensing, safeguarding in a rehearsal room is its own discipline and it is not satisfied by having a licence. Who is in the building, who is alone with a child and when, how a child gets from the rehearsal room to a parked car in the dark, what happens when a rehearsal overruns, who holds the medical and consent information, and who a child tells if something is wrong are all questions with answers that should exist before the first rehearsal rather than after an incident. This guide deliberately stops at the outline. Your designated safeguarding lead, your governing body's guidance, and where relevant the Disclosure and Barring Service are the right sources for the detail, and a ticketing guide is not.

Chaperone approval is a local authority process and is separate from the performance licence itself
Identify who your chaperones will be at the point you decide to cast children, not in production week
Agree ratios, sign-in and sign-out, and who is responsible for a child between the wings and the car park
Have a named safeguarding lead who is not also directing, and make sure children and parents know who it is
Collect medical, allergy and emergency contact information at application and keep it where it can be reached quickly
Decide the position on adults being alone with children, including for one-to-one music coaching, and write it down
Check DBS requirements for your specific roles rather than assuming, because eligibility depends on the activity
Brief every adult involved, including the ones who have done it for twenty years

The Equality Act 2010 places a reasonable adjustments duty on service providers under Part 3 and on associations under Part 7, and community organisations are not automatically outside it. Which description fits you is fact specific. Part 7 applies to an association with at least 25 members whose admission to membership is regulated by the association's rules and involves a process of selection, the definition in section 107(2), so a small group that anyone can join may sit outside Part 7. A group auditioning openly or selling tickets to the public may be providing a service under Part 3 instead. Some arrangements are neither, and where performers are paid the employment and occupation provisions can come into it as well. Work out which one describes your own position rather than assuming, and remember that what counts as reasonable then depends on your circumstances, which a guide cannot assess for you. What a guide can say is that the most common failure has nothing to do with the limits of reasonableness. It is that nobody asked. An applicant with a hearing impairment, chronic pain, anxiety, dyslexia or limited mobility arrives on the night, discovers that the audition is being held upstairs, or that sides are being handed out cold for immediate reading, or that they are being asked to wait in a corridor for ninety minutes, and either struggles through it or leaves. None of that is deliberate exclusion. It is the result of a process designed by people for whom the process happens to work. Asking a plain question in advance, with a named person to reply to privately, costs one line on a form and changes who is able to audition at all.

Put a clear adjustments question on the application form with a named contact who will reply privately
State the venue access position in the audition notice: steps, lifts, parking, accessible toilets, lighting and noise
Send sides, scripts and music in advance wherever possible, rather than requiring cold reading on the night
Offer the material in a readable format and be willing to provide a large-print or plain-text version
Give a realistic time slot rather than asking everybody to arrive at seven and wait
Allow a supporter or interpreter in the room where somebody needs one, and say so up front
Tell people what the audition will involve, in order, so nobody is managing uncertainty as well as nerves
Treat what somebody tells you about a disability as confidential health information, not as panel gossip

What an accessible audition actually looks like.

The notice goes out four weeks ahead rather than ten days, and it says where the auditions are, that the room is on the first floor and there is a lift, where to park, and that anybody who needs an adjustment should email a named person who is not on the panel.

The music and the sides go out with the notice. Everybody gets a slot rather than a start time. On the night there is somebody at the door whose only job is to meet people, and the panel explains what is about to happen before it happens. Nobody is asked to do anything they were not told about in advance, because a surprise is a much bigger obstacle for some people than for others.

Afterwards, the adjustment information does not go into the general cast spreadsheet. Not every adjustment request carries health data: a preference for an early time slot or a large-print script may reveal nothing about a person's health or disability at all. But many do, and information about health or disability is special category data under the UK GDPR, which needs an Article 9 condition on top of your Article 6 basis. The workable default is to treat adjustment information as special category unless you have actually established that a particular request is not, hold it with the named person who dealt with it, and share it only with those who need it in order to make the adjustment. The number of amateur societies with a shared drive containing a spreadsheet listing members' medical conditions, readable by anybody who has ever been given the link, is not small.

Once casting is done, an audition round has produced two quite different collections of personal data and they should not be treated the same way. The people you cast have handed you information that the production now runs on: contact details, availability, emergency contacts, medical and access information, and for children a parent or guardian relationship and probably licensing paperwork. That data has an ongoing purpose and needs to be held securely, kept accurate, and reviewed when the production ends. The people you did not cast have handed you an application and generated a set of panel notes, and once casting is settled and any questions about the decision have been answered, the purpose that justified holding it has largely gone. The storage limitation principle in UK GDPR Article 5(1)(e) requires personal data to be kept no longer than is necessary for the purpose it was collected for, and the accountability principle in Article 5(2) means you have to be able to justify whatever period you set. There is no fixed number in the legislation. What there is, is an expectation that you decided, wrote it down, told people in your privacy information, and then actually did it.

Cast members

Contact, availability, emergency, medical and access data with a live purpose. Hold securely, review at the end of the production, and keep only what the next one needs.

Applicants not cast

Application and panel notes. The purpose usually expires once casting is settled and questions are answered. Many groups delete a few months after.

Children

Licensing and chaperone paperwork has its own retention expectations under the regulations and your safeguarding policy. Do not fold it into the general pile.

Where audition data actually goes wrong.

Not in the collecting. In the spreading. A single audition round in a well-meaning society typically ends with the same personal data in five places: the original form, a spreadsheet the secretary made, an email thread between three panel members, a WhatsApp group with the production team in it, and a folder in somebody's personal cloud storage that is shared with a link that never expires.

Nobody decided that. It happened one convenient step at a time. But it means there is no meaningful answer to the question of who holds a child's medical information or an adult's disclosed mental health condition, no way to delete it when the retention period arrives, and no chance at all of responding properly if somebody exercises their right of access or asks for erasure.

Three habits fix most of it. Decide at the start where the master copy lives and that copies made elsewhere are working copies to be deleted. Keep special category information, meaning health, disability and anything similar, separate from the general contact list and share it only with people who need it to do something. And make the handover of all of it an explicit item when the committee changes, because the most common way a community organisation loses control of its records is that the person holding them stepped down and their email account went with them. For the wider picture on all of this, see our guide to UK GDPR for event organisers.

None of these come from bad intentions. They come from auditions being organised by volunteers, in the gaps between jobs and families, using whatever the last person used, in an organisation where the committee turns over every couple of years and nothing written down survives the handover. Reading this list against your own process will catch most of them before they cost you anything.

A free text box asking which parts somebody is interested in, producing answers the panel cannot compare
Asking for availability rather than unavailability, and getting a wall of optimistic ticks
Collecting availability after the cast list is published, so every conflict arrives as a crisis
No written criteria, so the panel is assessing something slightly different for each candidate
A panel that changes composition through the evening, with no record of who saw whom
No notes at all, leaving the committee unable to explain a decision three weeks later
Notes written as opinions about people rather than observations about auditions
No agreed method for resolving a split panel, so the decision goes to whoever is most persistent
Undeclared conflicts of interest where a panel member is casting a relative
Publishing the cast list before individually telling the people who were not cast
Telling somebody you will find them something, and then not finding them something
Discovering the child performance licensing question after casting rather than before choosing the show
Assuming an amateur unpaid production is automatically exempt from licensing without checking the actual conditions
Applying to the wrong council, or to only one council for a cast drawn from several areas
Using parent volunteers as chaperones without checking whether local authority approval is required
Asking about access requirements on the night, in front of a panel, if at all
Putting medical and disability information into the general cast spreadsheet
Keeping unsuccessful applicants’ forms and panel notes indefinitely because nobody wanted to delete them
Letting the whole record set live in the outgoing secretary’s personal email account

A practical checklist for an audition round.

1. Before you announce the show, work out whether children will be involved and contact the child employment or performance licensing team at the relevant local authority. Do this first, because it can affect what you programme.

2. Publish the rehearsal pattern and performance dates with the audition notice, so unavailability can be asked against real dates.

3. Build the application form around the show's actual named roles, individually selectable, plus an ensemble option and a question about accepting other roles.

4. Ask for unavailability, not availability, and ask separately about performance week and about anything not yet confirmed.

5. Put an adjustments question on the form with a named contact who is not on the panel, and answer every one of them privately before the day.

6. Agree the assessment criteria in writing and share them with applicants. Agree how a split panel decides.

7. Fix the panel, fix the format, give everybody the same information in advance, and take short factual notes at the time.

8. Declare and record conflicts of interest before you start, not after somebody complains.

9. Tell every applicant the outcome on the same day, individually, before any list is published.

10. Separate the cast data from the applicant data, hold health and access information apart from the general list, set a deletion date for unsuccessful applications, and put the whole lot somewhere the next committee will find it.

When to take proper advice.

This guide describes what published UK legislation and government guidance say. It does not, and cannot, tell you what is lawful in your specific circumstances. The situations below are the ones where groups most often get it wrong on their own.

You are casting children of compulsory school age in anything where the audience pays, the venue is licensed, or the performance will be recorded or streamed. Contact the child employment or performance licensing team at the council where each child lives, before you cast, and expect a lead time.

You believe an exemption in section 37 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963 applies to your production, including a body of persons approval, and you have not had that confirmed by the relevant local authority.

You are touring across the England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland borders with children in the cast, and the applicable regulations change.

You are working out whether a proposed adjustment for a disabled applicant is reasonable, or you have refused one and been challenged on it.

You have received a complaint about a casting decision that alleges discrimination rather than simply disagreeing with the outcome.

You have had a subject access request or an erasure request from somebody who auditioned, or you have realised your audition records are spread across places you cannot inventory. For any of these, consult a solicitor, your designated safeguarding lead, the relevant local authority, or the Information Commissioner's Office, which runs a helpline for small organisations.

If your organisation matches one of these patterns.

The principles are the same everywhere, but what bites hardest differs a lot by setting.

If you are an amateur dramatic or musical society casting a full-length show from a membership you will keep seeing at every social event, the fallout from casting decisions matters as much as the decisions. See notes for amateur theatre groups.

If you are a youth theatre or a school production, child performance licensing, chaperones and parental communication are the whole game, and the audition form is really a parent form. See notes for schools.

If you are a dance school running showcase casting where most participants are under 13 and families are heavily involved, availability across terms and exam periods is the constraint everything else bends around. See notes for dance schools.

If you are a choir or orchestra auditioning for a section, a solo or membership, the process is shorter but the fairness and record-keeping questions are identical. See notes for choirs and orchestras.

If you are a church running a nativity, a passion play or a youth production, you are mixing congregation members, visitors and children in one process and the safeguarding layer sits over all of it. See notes for churches.

If you are a village hall committee hosting somebody else's auditions, be clear which organisation is responsible for the applicants' data and for safeguarding on the night. See notes for village halls.

If you are a producing or receiving theatre working with agents, contracts and professional performers, there is a contractual layer on top of everything above. See notes for theatres.

Where tooling makes a difference.

Everything in this guide can be done with a paper form, a shared document and a disciplined secretary, and plenty of well-run groups do exactly that. What degrades is not the intention, it is the trail: which version of the code of conduct somebody signed, where the medical information ended up, and whether the unsuccessful applications from three seasons ago are still sitting in a folder nobody opens.

If you are looking at a system for this, the questions worth asking are narrow ones. Does an application record who responded, so you can actually contact them? Can you attach a document such as a chaperone agreement or a safeguarding code and record whether somebody read it, acknowledged it or agreed to it, with the exact wording shown at that moment frozen and given a reference, so the sign-off still points at the right version a year later? Can you turn a completed sign-up into an actual membership record without retyping it? Seaty's forms and surveys work that way, with a choice of identified, confidential or fully anonymous responses. An audition application is one of the cases where the identified mode is the right one, because you have to be able to contact the person and act on what they told you. Whichever route you take, that is the bar to hold a system to.

Related guides and policies

Plain-English explanations of the parts of running UK events and community organisations that catch people out.

Photo and media consent for UK organisers GDPR for UK event organisers Audience feedback surveys that get answered Selling tickets for UK charity events How UK ticketing fees actually work Forms, surveys and document sign-off Notes for amateur theatre groups Notes for dance schools Anonymity and data protection in surveys Turning form responses into members

Get the questions right before the auditions, not after.

Most casting problems are information problems created weeks earlier. Whatever you run your group on, the thing worth checking is whether your audition form asks for unavailability, names the actual roles, and leaves a record you can still explain in a fortnight.

Sources & further reading

Auditions and casting, for groups that have to see these people again.

The short version.

1. The audition application form.

Why listing the actual roles changes what you get back.

2. Availability is what sinks productions.