How to confirm a venue can hold your ceremony
This site is built from a published snapshot. It is the most complete answer available to "where can we legally marry", and it is still a snapshot — so anything you are serious about is worth confirming. It takes two questions.
Ask the venue first
They will know whether they are currently approved, because it is their approval. They will also know the thing the list cannot tell you: whether they still host weddings at all. A venue can hold a current approval and have stopped doing weddings entirely, and vice versa.
Then the council named on the entry
It is often not the council of the area you were browsing. For 44% of venues on this site the approving body is a different one from the area the venue sits in — usually because a county council approves premises inside one of its districts. A venue in Gosport is approved by Hampshire. Both are correct; they answer different questions. The area page tells you where the venue is, the entry tells you who to ask.
That is why every entry names its council rather than assuming you can work it out.
Why the site does not do this for you
Because it would go stale silently, and a stale confirmation is worse than none. The published list is republished at irregular intervals — once after a gap of two years — and a council can approve or lapse premises at any point in between. What this site can honestly offer is the complete published position and a clear pointer to whoever holds the current one. More on how the list is put together.