The personal licence exam (APLH): 40 questions, 60 minutes, 28 to pass

If you are going to authorise the sale of alcohol in England or Wales, the Licensing Act 2003 requires a personal licence, and the licensing authority will not issue one without an accredited qualification. In practice that means the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders — the APLH. This is what the exam actually asks.

The format

BIIAB, one of the awarding bodies, publishes it directly in the current specimen paper: "The examination comprises of 40 multiple choice questions and lasts 60 minutes. Candidates have to correctly answer 28 out of 40 questions to pass."

Twenty-eight out of forty is 70%. Twelve wrong answers and you still pass; thirteen and you do not.

One warning about the hour. Older BIIAB material says forty minutes, not sixty — the specimen paper from November 2021 reads "Candidates are assessed by a 40 question, 40 minute, multiple choice examination." That version is superseded. The Qualification Guide of February 2022 already gives the duration of exam as sixty minutes, and the specimen paper of August 2022 (version 3.1) says the same. Training pages that still quote forty minutes are copying the old document. You get an hour.

Other awarding bodies run the same qualification and may set a different pass mark or a different time — check the one your training provider uses rather than assuming.

Everything comes back to four objectives

Section 4(2) of the Licensing Act 2003 lists four licensing objectives, and every decision the Act describes is justified by reference to them:

1. the prevention of crime and disorder
2. public safety
3. the prevention of public nuisance
4. the protection of children from harm

They are not background. The exam asks you to name them, to count them, and — more often — to work out which one a given condition or refusal is serving. Learn them as an ordered list, because questions do ask which is which.

Note what is not on that list: the health of the population, and the economic interests of nearby businesses. Both are regular wrong answers.

What the exam covers

Seven areas, and they carry very different amounts of risk:

The part that carries personal liability

The reason this qualification exists is that some offences under the Act attach to a person, not to a business. Selling alcohol to a child, allowing the sale, knowingly allowing disorderly conduct, selling outside the permitted hours — these are the areas where the exam is least forgiving, because in real life they end with a licence being revoked.

The mandatory conditions imposed by the Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) Order 2014 sit in the same category: an age verification policy, free tap water, small measures made available and stated. The exam asks for them as a list, and it expects the list to be complete.

How to study for it

The APLH is not a difficult exam in the sense of requiring reasoning. It is a precise exam. Almost every question has a right answer that is stated somewhere in the Act or in the statutory guidance, and a wrong answer that is close enough to feel right.

That is why answering questions beats reading the manual. When the explanation under an answer quotes the section of the Act that decides it, the distinction sticks — and the distinction is what is being tested. Our UK Work Licence Tests app is built that way: every answer in the personal licence bank cites the provision behind it, most of them in the Licensing Act 2003 itself and the rest in the Home Office guidance issued under section 182.

Sources

• BIIAB — Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders, Specimen Question Paper, version 3.1, August 2022: forty questions, sixty minutes, twenty-eight to pass.
• BIIAB — Qualification Guide, version 1, February 2022: duration of exam sixty minutes, forty marks.
• Cheltenham Borough Council — Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders: forty questions, one hour, seventy per cent.
• The superseded figure appears in BIIAB's specimen questions of November 2021.
• Licensing Act 2003 — section 4(2) for the licensing objectives, and the offence and personal licence provisions throughout.
• Revised guidance issued under section 182 of the Licensing Act 2003 (Home Office).
• The Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) Order 2014.

Pass marks and exam duration are set by the awarding body and can differ between them. Confirm with your provider before booking.