Meet licensing

Changes to licensing criteria applications received on or after September 1st 2022:

  • All meets licensed at Levels 1 or 2 MUST provide a secondary strobe where it is requested by an athlete at the time of entry unless a secondary strobe cannot be provided at the meet for technical reasons.

In the case that a secondary strobe cannot be provided at the venue a full explanation of the issues preventing the provision must be provided with the licensing application and forwarded to the National Licensing Officer for recording purposes and to allow Swim England to investigate fully.

  • Meet conditions must advise athletes that “a secondary strobe will be provided where it is requested by the athlete at the time of entry”.

If this cannot be met, for technical reasons only, it should be stated in the conditions and a full explanation be submitted with the Licence Application.

  • For licensing applications received on or after September 1st 2022, all meets Licensed at Level 1 or 2 MUST have a minimum depth at the starting end of 1.35 metres.
  • Applications for the subsequent calendar year would not be accepted until after September, with no more than 8 months in advance at other times.

Licensing your meet

The region has established a licensing panel to scrutinise all license applications and post meet reports. This means that applications that do not adhere to the published guidelines will be identified and clubs asked to take remedial action before a license or a future license will be granted. All applications for meet licenses and post meet reports must be submitted by e-mail to the licensing officer. The completed forms and supporting documents should be included as attachments to the e-mail. Please make sure that you use the correct versions of the forms (see below).

  • A single application may only cover a series of meets if the conditions, entry/limit times etc. for the series are the same.
  • Separate applications must be submitted for competitions with different conditions, times etc.

The role of the panel is to help clubs deliver high quality competitions, not to punish people who get things wrong.

  • Where there is a problem with the application for a license, rather than rejecting the application, one of the members of the panel works with the submitter to address the problem
  • Where Meet Reports are incomplete and/or highlight a problem, one of the members of the panel will contact the club. If reports are incomplete we provide assistance in completion. Where there is a problem, we contact the club to understand why the problem occurred, the impact on the competition and how the clubs plans to avoid the same problem happening in the future.
 The objective of the Meet Licensing system is to assure the quality of swimming competitions and specifically to ensure that times submitted to Swim England rankings are reliable. We are instructed by the National Licensing Panel to operate this spirit of the criteria, rather than the absolute letter of the law. In so doing, we are always looking to see whether any breach of conditions actually threatens the integrity of the results.

Licensed meet calendar

View the national calendar.

Applying for a license

You must submit your license application using the Meet Application Form

Open Meet Licensing Requirements

SE Licensed Meet officials requirements 

Swim England Open Meet Licensing Criteria.

To help meet organisers all of the required forms are now available here:

Promoter Report Form 2019

Referee Report Form 2019

Officials in Attendance Report Form 

Useful additional documents

Swim England have a created a library of approved documents to support clubs, volunteers and athletes with Health & Safety advice, risk assessment and best practice. You can access the library here.

Officials’ Requirements (revised 11 March 2022)

Criteria for Training of Officials at Licensed Meets

Promoting your open meet

When you have licensed your meet it will automatically be added to the National events calendar. We suggest that you also promote it through your club’s social channels using appropriate hashtags so that it is more likely to get recognised by a wider audience.

Licensed swimming meets across England and Wales

Rankings Policy Document

Neutral Data Format (for submission of results to rankings)
LENEX Data Format (for submission of results to rankings)
Swim England Calendar