Services / Administrative cases
When your application matches the manual
The commonest problem in applying for a licence is not refusal but repeated requests for more documents, round after round, so the matter never closes. One statute prohibits exactly that, and many applicants do not know it exists.
The published manual is the reference point
The Licensing Facilitation Act B.E. 2558 (2015) builds its scheme on one document: the manual for the public under section 7, which collects the documents and evidence an application requires. Section 8 uses that manual as the measure of whether an application is correct and complete. An applicant who begins by finding the manual for their matter therefore has a reference point they can rely on later.
The duty to check and to notify at once
The first paragraph of section 8 makes it the duty of the officer receiving an application to check the application and the list of documents filed with it for correctness and completeness. Where the application is incorrect or something is missing, the officer must notify the applicant immediately; and where the matter can be put right there and then, must have it done at once.
The record of deficiencies, and the copy owed to you
Where the matter cannot be dealt with on the spot, section 8 requires the officer to record the deficiencies and the further documents needed, together with the period within which the applicant must supply them, and requires both the officer and the applicant to sign that record. The officer must then give the applicant a copy as evidence. That copy is the single document most worth keeping in the whole matter.
The prohibition applicants rarely know about
The third paragraph of section 8 is the heart of the Act. Where the applicant has made the application correctly and attached the documents in full as listed in the manual under section 7, or has corrected or supplied what the officer advised or what the record set out, the officer may not call for any further documents, and may not refuse to consider the application on the ground that it is incomplete.
The exception, and what follows from it
That prohibition has one exception: where the incompleteness arose from the negligence or dishonesty of the officer and has the result that authorisation cannot be given. In that case the authorising official orders as it sees fit, and disciplinary or criminal proceedings are to be taken against the officer concerned without delay. The exception is therefore tied to fault on the officials' own side, and is not a general door back to asking for more.
PREPARE
What to bring
- The public manual for the licence being applied for
- The application as filed and the documents attached
- The receipt for the application and any record of deficiencies
- What was asked for additionally, round by round
- The date of filing and of each contact with the agency
QUESTIONS
Questions this raises
They have asked for more documents a third time.
The first step is to set what was filed against the public manual for that matter, because the prohibition in the third paragraph of section 8 attaches once the applicant has met the manual or the record of deficiencies. If it has been met, the bar on asking for more takes effect. What should be in hand is the copy of the jointly signed record, which the Act requires the officer to give the applicant as evidence.
It has gone quiet: neither refused nor granted.
Silence is a different matter from refusal and has its own route: section 9(2) of the Administrative Court Act covers an agency neglecting its duty or performing it with unreasonable delay, with the written-request mechanism in section 49 as the step before. Where a refusal has actually been issued, the question becomes an appeal against an administrative order, which carries its own separate time limits.
LAW
The legislation
- Licensing Facilitation Act B.E. 2558 (2015), section 7
- Licensing Facilitation Act B.E. 2558 (2015), section 8
ENQUIRIES
