An incident register is a record of certain types of incidents that occur at a licensed premises. This fact sheet sets out the key components of keeping and maintaining an incident register.
A liquor incident register is mandatory if you are the licensee of a premises that is:
Maintaining an incident register will give you a better understanding of incidents that affect the safety of your licensed premises and customers.
It will also help you to develop appropriate strategies to reduce the risk of alcohol-related violence and anti-social behaviour at your licensed premises.
An incident register provides the ability for a licensed premises to make detailed contemporaneous notes of incidents should the incident need to be reviewed at a later point in time.
We encourage all licensees to maintain an incident register even if it is not a requirement for your licensed premises. They are a useful compliance tool and can form part of your venue's responsible practice.
It is important to put procedures in place to ensure your incident register is carefully maintained.
It is considered best practice for a Licensee to review the incident register on a regular (daily) basis to ensure that they are aware of any issues that have occurred.
You may delegate this responsibility to managers or other key staff at your licensed premises. However, it is a legal obligation for the licensee or approved manager to maintain the incident register.
Information recorded in a mandatory incident register must be retained for at least three years.
Licensed premises who employ security will need to maintain a separate register to comply with the Security Industry Act 1997 unless a digital platform that fulfills both requirements is used.
As of 1 July 2024, all licensed premises with one or more gaming machines will be required to keep a record of all gambling incidents in a Gambling Incident Register.
Visit the Gambling Incident Register for further information.
Licensed premises can choose to maintain their liquor and gambling incident registers together or in two separate incident registers. For ease of operations and reporting it is recommended to maintain the two registers separately unless you are using a digital incident register platform.
The types of incidents you must record in your register are outlined in Section 56 of the Liquor Act 2007 and Clause 42 of the Liquor Regulation 2018 .
Incidents that must be recorded
Any incident on a licensed premises that occurs between midnight and 5am that involves:
You must record the details of any action taken in response to an incident.
You are required to record the details of all aforementioned incidents regardless of the time of day at which they occur if:
It is considered best practice for a licensed premises to report other matters that will help you gain a more complete understanding of incidents that affect the safety of your licensed premises, this includes matters that affect your venue's operations.
This includes, but is not limited to, such things as:
A licensed premises that is required to keep a mandatory incident register must do so in a form approved by the Secretary. This can be either the bound book available for purchase or a digital incident register matching the digital requirements set out in the Digital Incident Register Guidelines PDF, 245.66 KB.
If your licensed premises is not required to keep a mandatory liquor incident register and chooses to voluntarily, you can use the following:
The incident register should be filled out and include the following information as per example below. The required fields include but are not limited to:
All required incidents must be entered as soon as practicable after the event and within 24 hours of the event occurring.
This should outline any reportable incident that involves violence, anti-social behaviour, when customers are asked to leave, or when an injury occurs that requires medical assistance.
Until 31 December 2024 a licensed premise may use the old incident register and digital register format, as well as the new format. This will provide time for industry and digital incident register providers to transition to the new register format.
Page one of the new register with a QR code that links to the web page fact sheet is available for you to print and attach to old versions of the incident register book throughout the grace period.
Our compliance inspectors and police can review incident registers when they audit a licensed premises, take copies of any incident register, or remove any register from a licensed premises.
It is an offence to not produce the incident register upon request (as well as previous registers from the past 3 years).
Incident registers can be ordered by visiting the NSW Government's online shop. Discounts are available for bulk orders of 20 or more – Liquor & Gaming online shop.
Some examples of both mandatory and voluntary incidents that could be reported including but not limited to:
It is considered best practice to avoid using acronyms without further description. Incidents must be recorded as soon as practicable, but within 24 hours after the incident. Remember to always record the details of any action taken in response to an incident.
Below is an example of a completed incident report. You can utilise the extra lines provided on the back of the page if needed.
The bottom section must be completed for all incidents and includes police notification section if applicable.
You can find the refuse entry log at the rear of the incident book.
This allows you to record refusals without having to complete a full incident report for each one.
T: 1300 024 720 E: contact.us@liquorandgaming.nsw.gov.au W: www.liquorandgaming.nsw.gov.au
