New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said during a press conference that authorities will assume that any business that doesn’t register its plans with the state government, doesn’t have one.
“If we don’t see greater compliance, we will need to take further action,” Ms Berejiklian said. “We’ve given, certainly, a grace period for businesses, for organisations, for different establishments to step up their COVIDSafe plans,” the Premier said. “If they don’t do that, we will have to go that step further.”
NSW Government moved to make COVIDSafe plans mandatory across the state several weeks ago, after an initial self-regulation approach failed to ensure health and safety measures were widely adopted across the private sector.
However, after taking stock of business’ efforts, Ms Berejiklian is still concerned compliance is too low, as workplaces across the state continue to report confirmed coronavirus cases.
In general, COVIDSafe plans involve businesses making written commitments to adhere to certain hygiene, physical distancing and contract tracing requirements.
Businesses are required to complete at least a template version of a COVIDSafe plan for their industry and register it online with the NSW government.
Businesses that either don’t register COVIDSafe plans, or fail to adhere to them, can be fined up to $55,000.
Businesses with multiple premises or services must complete a separate plan for each place of business and each service they offer.
For example, if a salon operates a separate brow bar to its main salon, both outlets will require separate plans.
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