What is meet licensing?
Licensed meets are swimming events licensed by Swim England. This means they have to meet certain standards to ensure fair competition.
If you are organising a Licensed Meet, or are interested in knowing more about them, the following resources are available to help you:
- Refer to the Swim England Document Library for useful licensing documents
- Look at the Swim England National meets calendar to check any potential clashes
- Review a summary of the difference levels of meet on the Swim England website and check the criteria for each level of competition by downloading the Swim England Open Meet Licensing Criteria and the Swim England Open Meet Licensing Criteria – Officials’ Requirements –effective from 3rd October 2023.
- Have a look at some of our conditions templates.
Level 3 Conditions Template v12
Level 4 Conditions Template v12
Please note- all applications for meets at Level 1-3 have to stipulate in their conditions whether a secondary strobe is available.
Swim England Transgender and Non-Binary Competition Policy
This will come into effect from events from 1st September 2023.
For further discipline information please see the Swim England website
After the meet
The Promoter will need to ensure that the following documents are sent to [email protected] within 14 days of the meet. This applies to each licence number issued.
- Referee’s report (the referee will probably send this themselves)
- Promoter’s report
- List of officials, including name, SE membership number and role at the meet.
- Any payments relevant to the meet. The levy is specified in the Swim England Open Meet Licensing Criteria (please note the East Region waive the fee for a level 4 single Club event).
- Back up for the payment calculation, e.g. entry report, list of accepted entries
The importance of insurance
All clubs, promoters and competition organisers are reminded that, for insurance purposes, all those volunteering on poolside at any competition must be registered members of an affiliated club or a member of the Institute of Swimming.
Applying for a license
Licensing applications for meets are now able to be submitted post lockdown.
The Meet Promoter will need to send the below information to [email protected] This must be done a minimum of 2 months before the first date of the meet in order to apply for a licence:
- Licensed Meet Application Form
- Meet Conditions (please refer to the templates on this page).
- Supporting documents: qualifying standards, meet schedule, entry forms
Please note that a single application may only cover a series of meets if the conditions, entry/limit times etc are the same.
You should not publish any conditions until a licence number has been issued.
When a license has been issued the promoter will receive confirmation. The license number can then be published.
For more information contact [email protected]
Helpful documents
- Levels 1 & 2 Officials Duty Sheet v4
- Levels 3 Officials Duty Sheet v4
- Levels 4 Officials Duty Sheet v24
- Swim England guide to running safe events
