Draft Alcohol Licensing Fees Bylaw

We are proposing a bylaw to set our own alcohol licensing fees. This means we would have the option to change how alcohol licensing is funded in Tauranga.

Open now for consultation

We want to know:

if you support an Alcohol Licensing Fees Bylaw to enable Council to set alcohol licensing fees and:
your views on who should pay for alcohol licensing in our city

Our current alcohol licensing fees are, set by national legislation in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Fees) Regulations and, cover around 40% of alcohol licensing costs. The remaining 60% is funded through general rates. We are exploring options to remove some or all these costs from rates.

Council is proposing an Alcohol Licensing Fees bylaw to enable us to set our own fees. If a bylaw was in place, then alcohol licensing fees could be set through the annual plan and long-term process along with all other fees and charges which are consulted on each year.

Schedule One of the proposed draft bylaw sets out indicative fees based on full cost recovery. This is to help inform community consultation. No decision has been made on the timing and level of any potential changes to the fees. These decisions will be considered as part of next year's annual plan.

While we are not looking at setting the level of fees in the proposed bylaw, we do want to know how you think alcohol licensing funding should be funded. This will help inform the next stage of the project.

We are wanting your views on this proposal.

You can do this by:

sharing your feedback online
emailing it to policy@tauranga.govt.nz
sharing your feedback via a printed consultation form, available at our Library Community Hubs

Community consultation opens on Friday 31 January and will run until 5pm Friday 7 March 2025

Share your thoughts

Council is responsible for administering the licensing functions of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 (the Act). This includes:

appointing and supporting the District Licensing Committee (DLC), made up of members of the community.
receiving and processing licence applications and managers’ certificates for DLC decision making.
preparing material for the DLC to meet their reporting requirements to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority (ARLA)
monitoring and compliance assessments of all licenses and certified managers – including inspections of premises and providing education to licensees.

Our alcohol fees are set under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Fees) Regulations 2013 and have not changed since they were first set in 2013. While the fees have stayed the same, the cost of alcohol licensing have increased. This means Tauranga ratepayers are now contributing about 60% (approximately $755,000) towards the cost of alcohol licensing. The legislation allows Council’s to set their own fee to recover the costs of alcohol licensing but a bylaw is needed for this to occur.

If a bylaw was in place we would have the ability to increase our licensing application and annual fees, so that we can reduce some or all of the costs from ratepayers. We want to know what you think.