Victorian Liquor Licence Changes

There have been recent changes to Victorian Liquor Licence’s which impact the costs based on the red line area of your business for producers licence holders. Below we’ve outlined ways you may be able to reduce the additional cost increases:

1. Reduce or Waive Liquor Licence Renewal Fees

Liquor Control Victoria has the power to waive or reduce licence fees in some circumstances.

Considerations may include:

• the geographical location of the licenced premises
• the quantity and nature of the liquor to be supplied,
• the risk of harm,
• whether the fee is likely to cause serious financial hardship,
• whether the licencee has been affected by natural disaster, covid restrictions, financial hardship or other serious event outside of their control.

Find out more and apply for a waiver here: Reduce or waive liquor licence renewal fee

Important! We encourage members who are applying for a waiver or reduction in fees to also include the following low risk parameters if applicable to your business: regionally based and hours/days of operation.  The reduction/waiver process currently states the requirement for an audited P&L but the VLC have advised Wine Victoria that they will accept non audited P&L’s as supporting evidence. 

2. Red Line Changes

Many producers increased their red line area during Covid to allow for better social distancing. If applicable for your space, producers can reduce the red line plan area to less than 150m2. Please email lsop@justice.vic.gov.au to request a reduction to your licenced area. You will need to provide your licence number and a proposed new red line plan. VLC can then process the request at no cost to producers via a S58 variation.

3. Promotional Event Authorisation For Producers

If your business holds both a producer licence and a temporary limited licence you can apply to have this merged as one licence under your producer licence.

• Please ensure that you have the ‘promotional event authorisation’ condition on your producer licence so that you do not have to apply for a temporary limited licence to attend markets and promotional events/trade shows.
• The effect of having the promotional event authorisation on a producers licence is that the licensee won’t have to apply for temporary limited licences each time they want to sell at a market or a trade show. The exception here is if they are attending a ‘major event’, for example, Grampians Grape Escape. In those instances they would need a ‘major event licence’.Find out more information about the major event process here: Apply for a major event liquor licence | vic.gov.au (www.vic.gov.au)
• How to address this:
  • For new entrants (ie applying for a producers licence for the first time), please tick the ‘promotional event authorisation’ box on the application form for a producers licence (question 13 on the paper form, see below)
  • For existing licensees please request a variation to the existing licence via this form Liquor-licence-application-kit-variation-conditions-existing-producers-licence.pdf. Please select ‘option 8’ on the form (see below). Note the form currently says that there’s an additional fee associated with this condition, from July 2023 this is no longer the case.

For more information visit Renew Your Liquor Licence

If you have any further queries regarding your licence please contact us at secretariat@winevictoria.org.au