The Victorian Labour Hire Authority grants extension to the Labour Hire Licencing Scheme it introduced in April 2019.
All labour-hire providers had 6 months, until 29 October 2019 to submit their applications for the licence.
If you submitted your application by this date, even though it may not have been approved by this time, you were still able to operate legally in Victoria until a decision had been made. Any applications that were submitted after this date, were to cease operating until a decision was made on their application.
However, last week, the Victorian Labour Hire Authority extended their grace period for applications.
They have advised that if you are still operating without a licence, as long as there is no evidence of non-compliance in other areas, you have until midnight on 31 December 2019 to ensure you have submitted an application.
This will ensure that you do not receive any fines or penalties, which are significant, severe and strictly enforceable. These penalties will apply to those operating without an approved licence as well as host clients who are engaging with unlicensed providers.
The criteria for applying for labour-hire licenses and the penalties for non-compliance vary between different states. You can view the commentary of differences here.
Why did they grant an extension?
The Labour Hire Authority received 3,841 licence applications in the 6 month period they originally allowed.
37% were submitted in 48-hour period in the last week of November so the Authority is still working through these applications and unable to confirm timeframes for completing the process.
Their efforts, they say were also hampered by the fact many applications were incomplete or incorrectly completed.
According to Shortlist, the Labour Hire Authority is also currently developing a feature that allows clients of labour-hire providers to voluntarily register interest in the licence status of their suppliers so they can be promptly notified of changes.