The perils of council permits when opening a small business

A few months ago, not long after we got the keys to Two Franks, I paid a visit to another local small food business that we had connected with on Instagram.

After placing our order and chatting with the woman behind the counter, we started talking about our new venture.

“How’s it all going?” she asked.

“Just getting started on the council permits,” I replied, to which she tsked her tongue and nodded knowingly.

“If you need anything at all, any advice, let me know.”

The simple words “council permits” are enough to strike fear into the hearts of any small business owner. Once you’ve gone through the process, you know the rollercoaster that awaits anyone brave enough to take it on.

Within a couple of days of signing our lease, we reached out to Two Franks’ local council in Melbourne to get our application started.

From that first phone call, it took 28 days to receive the initial paperwork and information we needed just to start the permit application. During our lease negotiations, we had requested and received two months rent-free to help us get set up. Almost instantly, one of those months vanished while waiting.

One of the unique challenges we faced with our particular building is that it has been a butcher’s shop for more than 100 years. Keys had been passed from tenant to tenant as laws and regulations formed and tightened around it.

As we are the first business that is not a butcher to request to use the space, our initial council contact struggled to even tell us how the building’s use could be defined. There were no records on their end to help guide us. We were basically starting from scratch.

When setting up a brand new food business, there are three departments and rounds of red tape to conquer: planning, building and health. Beyond that, there’s even more applications needed for external requests, such as outdoor seating, infrastructure like bicycle rings, right down to the ability to have an A-frame sign on the sidewalk.

But let’s take it step by step — planning is always the first cab off the rank.

Applying for a planning permit with our local council came at a cost of $1360.80. This was a cost that we painfully have had to pay twice.

You have 90 days to complete your planning application. As part of this, all applicants have to provide a detailed seating and floorplan prepared by an external, private draughtsperson. What we didn’t account for was that coming across a draughtsperson with any sort of availability at the moment is like unearthing gold.

With a backlog of building projects due to the past two years of lockdowns, draughtspeople are frantically playing catch up. In our case, our 90-day deadline was fast approaching and our overwhelmed draughtsperson applied for a 30-day extension. This was approved by council, but they missed the extended deadline and so we were made to start from the beginning and pay the fee again.

A cost of $1360.80 and four months of waiting with nothing to show for it.

It’s times like this that you really start to feel fatigued.

You can have a bright idea for a business and hit the ground running, but what we’ve found is you’ll soon enough hit a brick wall in the form of council requirements and fees. It slows momentum, the cost takes a huge chunk out of your set-up budget, and it is unnecessarily complex.

While working my way through paperwork, phone calls and endless online factsheets, one thought that I keep returning to is how difficult this whole process would be for someone for who English is a second language. If I’m struggling to navigate this, how can someone new to Australia, with aspirations of opening their own small business, possibly find their way through?

In a post-COVID world, with so many businesses struggling and numerous empty shopfronts along some of the city’s busiest streets, local governments need to look at ways to streamline applications, waive fees and encourage more life back into our streets and buildings.

Just as outdoor parklets were a creative way to get people back to cafes and restaurants, we can now see that thinking outside the box (or parking space) can create brighter and more vibrant public spaces that help both the community and small businesses.

As we move through this tumultuous economic period, councils need to be disrupting the ways of days gone by to keep small businesses alive and prospering.

Chryssie Swarbrick is a writer, small-business-juggler and mum of two. She is currently documenting her adventures in opening a cafe, Two Franks, opposite her childhood home.