Licensees have an inherent obligation to make sure any negative impact on local residents or businesses in their community is minimised.
The community can take action against licensed premises that have a negative impact on your neighbourhood. The Secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service has the authority and a range of enforcement options to deal with disturbance complaints against licensed premises.
Managing complaints effectively is important to building good relationships between your venue, patrons, and the community. Complaints can provide useful feedback, and help you to improve your business.
Below are some examples of things you can do to help resolve disturbance issues early. Successfully resolving issues at a local level will prevent complaints escalating to mediation or a formal process.
Noise, including: loud music, how patrons behave in your venue, and how they enter or leave your venue – can have a big effect on the neighbourhood and seriously damage goodwill towards your venue.
Small changes can make big differences.
It’s important that residents and businesses are aware of different ways they can address disturbance issues.
Information is available to let the community know how to deal with their disturbance concerns, including letting them know that the simplest and most straightforward way to deal with a disturbance concern is to contact the venue directly.
The formal complaints process is also available to them if they can’t resolve the issue with you through direct contact.