Access rarely decides whether a booking is possible and frequently decides whether the day runs well. It is the cheapest thing to get right and the most annoying to get wrong.
Getting people and equipment to the door
North London Venue Guide Getting people and equipment to the door
North London is well served by public transport and badly served by parking, and both facts shape an event more than people anticipate.
Guests
Assume most guests arrive by tube, overground or bus, and say so on the invitation with the nearest station named and the walk described honestly. Ten minutes from the station in daylight is a different walk from ten minutes at midnight along an unlit industrial road, which is a real consideration for arch and unit venues.
Check the last realistic departure for the journeys your guests are making, and check it for the actual night rather than in general. Weekend engineering works on the overground and the northern reaches of the tube are frequent, and a replacement bus adds an unwelcome half hour to the end of an evening.
Where guests will drive, find out what the parking situation genuinely is rather than what the listing claims. Most of inner north London sits within controlled parking zones, and the hours vary by borough and by street. Evening and weekend controls are common in Islington, Camden and parts of Hackney and Haringey. A venue with "parking nearby" may mean a permit-holder bay that will be ticketed.
Load-in
The question that matters for anything with equipment: can a vehicle get within reach of the door, and for how long.
Establish where the vehicle stops, whether that is a legal stopping place at your load-in time, whether a loading bay exists and what its hours are, and whether there is a barrier, gate or bollard involved and who holds the key.
Then establish the route from vehicle to room. A first-floor room reached by a single domestic staircase with a turn in it is a genuine obstacle for a piano, a bar fridge or a drum kit. Measure the turn if it matters.
Ask what time load-in can start. Setup access is one of the things venues will most readily give, because it costs them little, but it has to be asked for and written into the agreement. See hire agreements.
Suppliers arriving separately
Caterers, florists, hire companies and bands rarely arrive together and rarely arrive when you expect. Give the venue a written list of who is coming and when, and give each supplier the venue's actual access instructions rather than the postcode.
The single most common day-of problem in this category is a supplier arriving before anyone with a key is on site.
Waste
In halls, arches, studios and dry hire, waste removal is often the hirer's responsibility, and it is consistently underestimated. A hundred guests generate more than fits in a car, glass is heavy, and a venue's own bins are usually sized for the venue's own trade.
Establish who removes what, whether there is a charge for leaving it, and where the bins are. Where you are removing it yourself, the vehicle that brought the equipment needs to still be there at the end of the night, which affects who drives and therefore who drinks.
Neighbours at the end of the night
The get-out is where noise complaints are actually generated: doors propped open, vehicles running, people talking on a residential pavement at one in the morning. Venues with dispersal conditions will manage the guest exit, but the crew exit is usually yours to manage.
Load out with the doors closed where you can, keep voices down in the street, and do not run an engine outside a house for twenty minutes. This sounds like advice for someone else, and it is the reason venues lose licence conditions. See noise and curfews.
Taxis and pickups
Establish where a taxi can actually stop, which in a controlled or gated area is not always outside the door. If you are arranging transport for a group, agree the pickup point with the venue and put it on a sign by the exit, because nobody reads a message at that hour.
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