Signage licence renewal
Any outdoor signboard or advertisement on your premises — your fascia sign, a projecting sign, a pavement A-board — needs an outdoor advertising licence from BCA, renewed every year.
Any outdoor signboard or advertisement on your premises — your fascia sign, a projecting sign, a pavement A-board — needs an outdoor advertising licence from BCA, renewed every year. Unlike most of your other licences, this one is renewed by GIRO deduction rather than a manual application each year, and BCA makes that GIRO arrangement compulsory rather than optional.
An unlicensed or expired signboard is an offence, and BCA can require it to be taken down. Because renewal runs on GIRO, the more common failure mode is not forgetting to apply — it is a lapsed or cancelled GIRO mandate quietly letting the licence expire without anyone realising, since there is no invoice to notice going unpaid.
If you switch banks or close the account BCA deducts from, replace the GIRO mandate before the next renewal date — do not just let the old one lapse.
Who this is for
Every venue with an outdoor sign, signboard or advertisement visible from outside the premises.
What you’ll hold
- Current outdoor advertisement licence
- Confirmation of an active GIRO mandate with BCA
Watch out for
- Not realising GIRO renewal is compulsory (not optional) for this licence, so cancelling the GIRO mandate — for example when switching banks — without replacing it can lapse the licence unexpectedly.
- Changing or adding a new sign without applying for a new licence, on the assumption the existing GIRO-renewed licence automatically covers it.
- Assuming no invoice means no problem — because there is no manual bill to chase, a failed GIRO deduction can go unnoticed until BCA flags the sign as unlicensed.
Sources
- BCA — Sign display guidelines and requirements checked 2026-09-08
See also
This is item 27 of 32 in the free Singapore Compliance Calendar. See the whole list →