The social licence has been studied for almost two decades, but the focus has largely been from an industry perspective, and the approach is typically company-driven (Jenkins, 2004). The terminology suggests that the company must perform some social function in exchange for a licence, and there is an indication that companies must follow a process to acquire it, but it is not clear what is done and how communities articulate their acceptance of what is done (Parsons and Moffat, 2014). Maintaining a social licence has been widely accepted as an industry imperative, but the degree to which they are being successful in that objective, is not being measured (Richert et al. 2015). A major limitation of the social licence dialogue to date has been the neglect of the community voice. Previous studies have failed to highlight the obvious, but unstated, fact that communities are very different to industry, and their participation in the social licence process should be tailored to their context-specific reality, to reflect the genuine challenges they may face.There are often challenges within communities themselves which could make it difficult for them to enter into a social licence to operate as a partner in the process. For example, communities are not always cohesive, there are issues with local representation, and their ability to assert their needs is limited. This results in projects going ahead even when communities are not in agreement. It is no wonder that the phenomenon is written mostly from an industry perspective. In this regard, the legitimacy elements and challenges within communities that could impact their role in the social licence phenomenon, as issuers, are unexplored. Instead, there is an on-going assertion by industry that if the statutory requirements have been met, the social licence is in place. CITATION:Nyembo, N and Lees, Z, 2019. Interrogating the legitimacy to enter into a social licence: a community perspective, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 141142 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).