The state government hopes to reduce the time required to secure approvals for starting a restaurant by up to three months through a $1.6 million ‘flying squad’ initiative.
Finance Minister Bill Marmion and Small Business Minister Sean L'Estrange told reporters the flying squad unit would spend 90 days at a time opening up bottlenecks and removing duplicate requirements in the approvals process.
Mr Marmion said the initiative was the next phase in the state government’s #ShredTheRed campaign.
“In collaboration with the private and public sectors, the flying squad will conduct three-month analyses to yield fast, practical reform recommendations,” he said.
Fourteen recommendations had been made to streamline regulation and speed up restaurant startups following a recent trial project to map restaurant approval roadblocks in Perth, Mr Marmion said.
“We worked out the average time it takes to open a restaurant, particularly if you want a liquor licence, is nine months. Now that’s a long time,” Mr Marmion told a media briefing at The Dominion League in Northbridge today.
“The flying squad will have 90 days to map all the steps involved in opening a restaurant.”
Mr L’Estrange said the goal was to reduce red tape to set up small businesses.
“The 90-day mapping project is about mapping what’s required from a regulatory regime, figuring out where duplication is occurring and where it can be cut out, and reducing the time required to get people to set up their business,” he said.
Treasurer Mike Nahan said it was important that as many local industries as possible benefited from red tape reforms driven by the mapping projects.
Mr Marmion said a similar initiative was also under way to simplify residential building approvals, while the #ShredTheRed campaign would be targeting ecotourism and aquaculture in the state next.
