The Liquor Licensing Act imposes a range of obligations on licence holders that cannot be met
without proper consideration of venue security. This is particularly so for those premises that
trade late at night and for premises that provide entertainment.
Licensees have obligations under the Act to, among other things:
- effectively control the sale and consumption of liquor on the premises;
- ensure the responsible service of alcohol;
- prohibit or restrict the entry of young people;
- require violent, quarrelsome or disorderly people to leave the premises; and
- comply with any conditions on their licence or permit.
These obligations are in addition to the general workplace safety and duty of care obligations that
arise from other legislation.
Complying with these obligations will require licensees to carefully plan for their security
requirements.
Licensed premises that provide music entertainment and/or trade very late may have conditions
imposed on the out-of-hours permit by the Commissioner. One common condition is for
sufficient licensed crowd controllers to be provided.
Crowd controllers
There are no hard and fast rules for determining what constitutes sufficient licensed crowd
controllers as security requirements depend on a range of factors discussed below. The
management of licensed premises is the responsibility of the licensee and therefore it is the
licensee’s task to assess and provide for what would be sufficient security for the activities
occurring on their licensed premises. Each licensed premises presents different risks and licensees
are in a unique position to understand the particular issues and risks relevant to their premises.
A management plan can be useful and is encouraged.
A management plan can assist in identifying
risks and developing a responsible approach to addressing them. The effective management of
licensed premises plays a vital role in preventing and reducing anti-social behaviour and violence at
licensed premises.
As a general rule, firms that provide security at licensed premises would allow for two crowd
controllers for the first 100 patrons and then one additional crowd controller for each additional
100 patrons or part thereof.
Factors which may impact the number of crowd controllers
- the nature of the licensed premises;
- the entertainment being provided;
- the hours of trade;
- the target demographic of patrons of the premises;
- layout of the premises (e.g. number of separate areas);
- accessibility;
- numbers of patrons in the venue and subsequent mobility issues;
- entry and exit points;
- whether a cover charge is applied;
- whether there is queuing of patrons on the footpath; and
- visibility (i.e. illumination at entry points and within venue).
Licensees should also consider
- establishing clearly with crowd controllers what their duties will be. (e.g. checking id’s,
monitoring behaviour of patrons in the premises, monitoring patrons before entering the
premises, monitoring patrons leaving the premises);
- ensuring that crowd controllers will be able to effectively and clearly communicate with
each other together with venue staff and management;
- providing crowd controllers with details of any conditions imposed on the licence or
permit;
- ensuring that crowd controllers can be easily identified; and
- liaising with Tasmania Police.
In Tasmania any person who is employed as a crowd controller must be licensed under the
Security and Investigations Agents Act 2002. The only exception is the licensee of a licensed premises
who may also undertake crowd control activities as part of their normal duties on the licensed
premises.
Application forms to become a crowd controller are available from Consumer Affairs and Fair
Trading, Department of Justice.