Occasional Liquor Licence lodgement guide

Exemptions for late applications

If an application is deemed late you may not be able to proceed with the online form and you must contact our E-Business section on 61 8 6551 4999 to seek the department’s approval to accept the application. Please have your client reference number and/or username available so that the e-business officers can locate your application. Please note, late applications will generally only be considered if the Department has the ability to assess the application within the afforded timeframe. In addition, providing you with an exemption code does not guarantee a late application will be assessed and determined in time for the event.

Late trading

Trading beyond 12 midnight on Mondays to Saturdays or 10pm on Sundays will generally not be approved unless there are special circumstances. You may be asked to provide further submissions if you indicate that your event will go beyond these hours.

Profit sharing

Will there be another entity obtaining proceeds from the event, such as entry tickets or a percentage of the proceeds from liquor? If yes, please ensure that profit sharing is declared in the application including a description of the profit sharing arrangement and contact details of Profit sharer is required. If another person/entity is receiving proceeds from the sale of liquor, it is important to establish who will be responsible for the licence when choosing the correct entity type.

Door charge

Map of defined licensed premises

If the proposed licensed area is outdoors or partly outdoors, a map of the defined licensed area is required to accompany the application. A hand drawn floor plan or existing building plan will suffice including an additional screen shot from google maps or Landgate to illustrate the location. The map must include any nearby buildings or rooms you wish to use, nearby roads and other identifying features, and the location of bar areas within the desired licensed area. Please make sure to highlight the boundary of the licensed area where liquor will be sold, supplied and consumed.

The acceptable formats for uploading maps are:

• Portable Network Graphics (.png)
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg)
• Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)
• Portable Document Format (.pdf)

Figure 1 Example of proposed licensed area

Exhibitors

Depending on the nature of an event, the holder of a permanent liquor licence may be authorised, under an occasional licence, to attend an event to exhibit their own produce. Generally, these type of applications are lodged by the event organiser. The type of permanent liquor licence held by an exhibitor will be taken into consideration when assessing the application and as a general principle, an exhibitor will not be permitted to trade in a manner contrary to their existing licence. Should exhibitors wish to trade in a manner not authorised under their permanent licence, a submission should be lodged demonstrating why the application is in the public interest.

A spreadsheet will be required which should contain a full list of all participating licensed premises/licensees including the liquor licence number and proposed manner of sale and supply i.e. tastings, by the glass, packaged liquor. Please see below for example of approved exhibitor list template.

Crowd controllers

The purpose of crowd controllers at occasional licensed events is to manage the number of people within the licensed area as well as usual crowd control requirements. High risk events such as concerts benefit from good crowd controllers as they can make the difference between a well managed event and possible disaster.

The term ‘crowd controllers’ refers exclusively to licensed crowd controllers only. Bar staff or local volunteers offering to manage crowds is not acceptable as crowd controllers under the Security and Related Control Act.

If deemed necessary you may be requested to hire crowd controllers if your event is considered high risk despite the number of patrons.

In this regard, the crowd control requirements will be determined on the merits of the application and the level of risk to the community the premises/events may present. Consideration of such applications and the crowd controller requirements will be subject to the initiatives the applicant proposes to implement to minimise risk.

Crowd controller requirements will be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the nature of the licensed premises/event and the initiatives proposed by the applicant to mitigate risk. The licensing authority may determine that the security requirements can be met through the use of a combination of: licensed crowd controllers, licensed security officers, approved managers or responsible service of alcohol marshals. However, a minimum number of crowd controllers determined by the licensing authority may be required.

Supervision and management

An approved manager is an authorised person who has been pre-approved by the department to manage licensed venues across Western Australia. It is a requirement under the Act that every occasional licence is supervised by the holder of a restricted or unrestricted manager approval at all times.

The approved manager is not required to be a member of the organisation or company and any person who carries the approved manager ID card may be hired or engaged to manage the sale and supply of liquor at your proposed event. If you are interested in applying for the approved manager ID card please refer to the Approved manager lodgement guide on our website.

Lodgement alternatives

Applications sought in regional areas for a period of up to seven days and where no more than 500 patrons are expected to attend on any one day can be lodged manually through the local court house.

For small occasional events please review the Exemptions to the Liquor Control Act 1988 policy as there are certain instances where the sale or supply of liquor is exempt from the Liquor Control Act 1988 (the Act).

With respect to an Occasional Liquor Licence application sought for a function or event that takes place over a number of dates, the fee will be calculated based upon the total maximum number of persons expected to be present in the licensed area at any one time over the period. For example: if a function or event runs for 2 days and the maximum number of persons expected to be present in the licensed area at any one time is 300, then the fee will be calculated on an attendance of 600 people in total and will be $260.50.

In addition to the application fee, new applicants in respect of profit sharing agreements or arrangements will pay an additional $171.00 fee for each individual who is party to the agreement or arrangement and in relation to whom a background check is sought from the WA Police Force.

Checklist

Please have the following information available for when you commence lodgement of the occasional application form.

Event details

Trustee details for unincorporated bodies

Events with profit sharing

Events with exhibitors

Wet mess/canteen applications

How to lodge an application

Please refer to the following steps to lodge your application:

1. Create an account
2. Complete the liquor licence applicant details form
3. Complete the liquor licence application form
4. Make payment

1.  Creating an account

First you must create an account. This account will be used to submit your applications, returns and change your address details.

• Visit the online portal (opens a new window)
  
• Select Create Account.
  
• Add all required fields and click Register.
  • The username must be in lowercase letters and cannot contain spaces or symbols such as @, !, &.
  • The password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least 1 number, 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase letter.
• An email will be sent to the email entered when completing the required fields.
  • Go to your email account and locate the registration email and click on the registration link to complete your account creation.
  • If copying the registration link please ensure you copy and paste the entire link into your internet browser.
• To complete the account verification, log into your account when prompted by entering your username and password.
• Click Register to finalise and activate your account.

Once your details have been entered and registered, you will not be required to register your details again. You can amend your details at anytime by logging into your account.

If you experience any issues with the account creation process please contact our department on 61 8 6551 4999.

2. Completing the applicant details

Now that you are set up with an account you can start the application. Whenever you start an application for the first time in a new account it will automatically divert you to an Applicant Details form. This must be completed prior to starting any application types and once created cannot be changed. If you are using an existing account, you will be given an option to skip this form if your contact information has not changed.

1. In the menu bar at the top of the page click on New Lodgement to locate the online application forms
2. From the drop down menu select the Group as Liquor and then the Type as Occasional Liquor Licence Application. Click on Submit to start the form.
   
3. Complete the Liquor Licence Applicant Details form
   • Ensure you read the Instructions page carefully
   • Please note that if this is a new account you cannot Save this form and return to it at a later date, it must be completed in full and submitted the first time around to properly set up the account. If you have to exit the form for whatever reason you will be required to restart the application to return to this point.
4. Click on Submit to complete the form. You will then get your Applicant Reference Number. If you need to contact us you can use this number as a reference to assist us with any enquiries.
5. Click on Continue to proceed through to the Liquor Licence Application form. If you click on continue and it does not automatically start the next form please return to New Lodgement, select the form type again, and choose to skip the Applicant Details form to proceed.

3. Complete the Liquor Licence Applicant Details form

The application form works the same way as the Liquor Licence Applicant Details form, just with different questions. Read through each question carefully and remember to save your form often.

This form is designed to be intuitive, when you answer a question it will change the form to allow you to provide more information. Please be sure to give the pages a few moments to update when you select an option in case it needs to create more fields for you to fill out.

If you do not have the information required at hand you can save your form and return to it later via the My Account page. Clicking on Save will create a link on the My Account page under Saved Forms. You can click on Resume to proceed or Delete to remove the saved form.

Step 4: Making payment

Upon submission of the form click on the Pay Fee button to view the payment options and make payment.

Payment for online lodgement can be made online via BPOINT. To pay via any other method, including BPay, please click the View Quote button. This will generate a quote with payment details and your unique application number.

Please make sure to quote the Application Reference Number when submitting any enquiries or manual documents in relation to this application.

When the fee is paid the date of lodgement will be the date the payment is receipted by the licensing authority. It generally takes 1-2 business days for the fee to register on our system. Please be aware that we will be unable to issue you with an official receipt until the fee has fully registered. When you make payment online you will instead be offered a payment confirmation slip which you can retain as evidence of payment if required.

For a full list of the fees and charges please refer to the fees and charges page.