Agreed in writingbefore anyone arrives with a van

01AgreementSeven clauses, signed both ways

Nothing is held on a telephone call. A hire exists once an agreement has been signed by the hirer and countersigned for the company, and the agreement says the same seven things every time.

1. The date, the access time, and who will be on site to receive the hirer.
2. Which layout state the room will be in, and who changes it.
3. The finish time, and the separate clear-by time for the hirer’s own property.
4. The floor figure for that layout, and that it is the number the door will work to.
5. The named person responsible on the night, who is on site throughout.
6. The deadline for final numbers.
7. The terms covering deposit, cancellation, damage and lost property.

Seven clauses, and the one that gets forgotten is the fourth. A hirer who has invited more people than the layout holds has not booked a bigger room — they have booked a different layout, and that is a far cheaper conversation in the week before than at the door.

02LayoutChosen in the agreement, not on the day

The layout state is picked from the four on the room page and written into the agreement rather than discussed on arrival. A hirer may move their own décor within a state. They may not move furniture between states, because a changeover is a signed job with an exit walk at the end of it.

If a hirer needs a state the room is not in when they arrive, the changeover comes out of their access time and is written down as such. Access is the hour the doors open to them, not the hour the room becomes whatever they had pictured.

03SuppliersPaperwork before the date, not on it

Every supplier a hirer brings sends paperwork in advance: public liability insurance that is in date, a current portable-appliance test record for each piece of electrical equipment, and a written risk assessment for anything that is rigged, heated, inflated or set alight.

• No paperwork, no power socket. The two are the same decision.
• Rigging to the truss is done by the house, never by a visiting supplier.
• A visiting operator’s sound goes through the house system, and therefore through the limiter.
• Flames, gas bottles and generators are refused, indoors and out.

This is not a hurdle for the sake of having one. It is a list of the things that, when they go wrong, go wrong in a full room.

04DécorWhat may be fixed to what

Décor goes up on freestanding supports or on the house rigging points. It does not go on pipework, sprinkler heads, light fittings, exit signage or the inside face of an exit door. Fabric and paper used in any quantity have to be flame-retardant to a recognised standard, and the certificate travels with them rather than being described over the telephone.

Balloons filled with lighting gas, aerosol snow, confetti cannon and anything that leaves a floor slippery are refused, because the floor has to stay walkable for the dispersal at cue 05.

05NumbersDue in writing, before the brief

Final numbers are due in writing by the deadline in the agreement. The figure given is the figure the door is briefed to, and it cannot be raised on the night, for the simple reason that the brief was given before anybody arrived.

Clear-by is the hirer’s own deadline and it sits after the room’s close rather than inside it. Anything left behind after clear-by is logged as lost property and held for the period on the records page, not stored indefinitely as a favour.

06TermsDeposit, cancellation, damage

A deposit holds the date and is quoted inside the signed agreement. This site publishes no figures for hire of any kind: the only number that governs anything is the one in the document both sides have signed.

Cancellation is expressed in days before the date rather than in bands with names, so that both sides are counting the same thing off the same calendar. Damage is assessed against condition photographs taken at access and again at clear-by — two sets, taken by the house, both timestamped. That is the only version of that argument in which anybody is right.