Christmas party venue in Bournemouth

A shared Christmas party night is one where a venue sells the same evening to several companies at once. Everyone eats the same set menu at the same time, the start is fixed, and whoever else booked that date is sitting a few feet away. It is the cheaper way to do December, and for a team of six it often makes good sense.

Ashbury works the other way round. There is one function room, one bar and one garden, and a booking has the lot. No other party is in the building, the start time is the one you pick, and nobody is turning the room round for a second sitting at nine o'clock.

There are three things a shared table plan will fight you on: a speech, an awards bit, and somebody's leaving do folded into the evening.

Usually that question means: what will HMRC let us spend before somebody picks up a tax bill? The figure is £150 a head. The detail that trips people up is what happens at £151.

HMRC calls it an exemption rather than an allowance, under that exact heading, and the difference is the whole point. A party costing £150 a head is exempt. The same party at £151 a head is a taxable benefit on the full £151, not on the pound over. There is no tapering and no partial relief.

Three conditions have to hold, and all three at once:

• The event is annual. A Christmas party or a summer barbecue counts. A one-off does not.
• It is open to all your employees, or to everyone at one site if you run several.
• It comes in at HMRC's ceiling of £150 or less per person.

Per person means the total bill divided by everybody who attends, including partners and guests and not only staff. That total counts VAT, and it counts any transport or overnight accommodation you lay on so people can get there.

The £150 belongs to the tax year, not to one event. A summer barbecue and a Christmas party share it. If the pair come to more than £150 a head between them, HMRC exempts whichever functions best use up the £150 and taxes the rest in full. Where neither event comes in under £150 on its own, neither one can be exempt.

£150 is HMRC's threshold, not our price. What an evening here comes to depends on your numbers and on the food and drink you choose, so the figure comes out of a conversation once we know what you have in mind.

The rule above is HMRC's, set out in their own guidance, and it is correct as at 21 September 2026. Your accountant, not your venue, is the one to check your own position with.

Two questions decide it, and neither is about the venue. Does anyone have to work the next morning? And are you asking people to give up an evening that was already theirs?

Friday answers the first one, which is why Fridays in December go first everywhere. Saturday asks a team to spend their own weekend on a work event, and that is a bigger ask than it looks on a spreadsheet.

A weeknight in early December is the option most organisers skip past. Midweek dates stay open longest, and a 7pm start with music until 11 is still a full night out.

On the invitation, six to eight weeks ahead is the point where people stop saying maybe and give you a number, because December diaries harden through November.

Booking the room works to a different clock. A deposit secures the date, a further payment falls six months before the event, and the balance six weeks before it. For a booking made close to the date those stages compress, so ask when you enquire.

If you want to get in the day before to decorate or drop things off, that can be arranged and needs booking in advance.

The honest answer is that most of it is decided before anyone arrives. A room with a proper dance floor in the middle and seating around it behaves differently from a function suite with a corner cleared. Ours is fixed and permanent, not hired in and laid on the night, so the floor sits where everyone can see it.

A DJ or a live band both work in this room, and which one you pick is your call. There is also a pool table in a room of its own, for whoever has had enough of the music by half nine.

Decorating is yours to do, or ours. Bring your own balloons, banners, table settings and photographs and dress it yourselves; hand it to Ashbury's in-house person for the detail; or hand the whole thing over as a full decoration package.

Candles and table flames are fine, on centrepieces or anywhere else you want them. Fireworks are not, because the garden is not large enough to hold them safely. All drinks come through our own bar, so there is nothing to carry in, and the smoking area is at the front of the building.

Christmas parties sit alongside the rest of the celebrations Ashbury hosts in Bournemouth. If this is a work party and not a family one, the corporate events page covers meetings, away-days and the AV side.

Catering is cooked in-house, from canapés and a buffet through to a full sit-down meal, with halal available. A sit-down carries no minimum head count, which matters as much for a team of twelve as for a team of sixty.

Plenty of venues in town do set a floor for a private booking, so it is worth asking early wherever you are looking.

Tell us about dietary requirements when you book, well ahead of the night. If you need your own caterer for a particular reason, ask us: it depends on the booking, and it is worth raising early.

Parking is on site and it is paid for: 30 spaces, shared with the hotel at the same address, first come and first served. Once they have gone nobody here goes hunting for another one, so tell anyone driving to allow a few extra minutes.

Two further car parks sit within a five-minute walk. The bar is step-free and the function room is up three small steps. Wifi is available for guests.

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