Presently, the Town of Vancouver has a complete of 570 sorts of business enterprise licences, a determine that has grown from a long time of just tacking on new varieties.
That figure will be whittled down to just 88 business enterprise licence sorts starting off upcoming year.
This week, Vancouver City Council is expected to approve Metropolis staff’s tips to simplify and streamline the huge variety of small business licence styles.
The new small business licence method will begin on April 1, 2024, for new licence purposes. Existing business enterprise licence holders will see their licence renewed beneath the existing process for 2024, soon after the yearly expiration day of December 31, 2023. Then setting up in 2025, all current licences will be renewed less than their new variety.
For instance, now, there are 25 unique sorts of licences and expenses for typical contractors, such as separate licences and charges for framing, flooring, stucco, insulation, air conditioning, tiler, irrigation, roofer, painter, landscape gardener, and plant/tree elimination. All 25 of these unique licence varieties would be simplified into just just one licence kind and price.
These types of adjustments will efficiently lessen the need for some corporations to hold many small business licences.
Town Council will ascertain the new streamlined enterprise licence charges later this year.
“Streamlining of licence forms, together with up to date definitions and modernized terminology, will boost clarity for local firms, increase facts analysis for workers and external scientists, and superior potential evidence the License By-legislation to help new and evolving small business forms,” reads a Metropolis employees report.
This consists of doing away with out of date business licence styles, these as teenage disco golf equipment and pen pal products and services. The Town states the 1969-enacted Licence Bylaw and 1986-enacted Cars for Seek the services of Bylaw, which regulate most kinds of small business licensing, have grow to be “overly unwieldy from several years of incremental updates.”
In simple fact, the big quantity of licence types observed in the Town of Vancouver is appreciably extra than other metropolitan areas in BC and Canada, according to the municipal authorities.
In 2022, the municipal federal government issued about 53,000 company licences and generated $20.6 million in licence cost profits. Town employees said the forthcoming modifications are not expected to impact income.
About 85% of the licence apps in 2022 have been regarded uncomplicated and can be issued inside the exact same day they are processed. But the remaining 15% are a lot more advanced and prolonged thanks to wellbeing, safety, and nuisance considerations, which require permits and clearances from other Town departments, Vancouver Law enforcement Department (VPD), Vancouver Coastal Overall health, and/or the provincial government’s Liquor and Hashish Regulation Branch. Sorts of corporations that have far more advanced programs involve places to eat, nightclubs, bars, pubs, and cannabis and liquor stores.