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We are a residential-only unit block. Every year at our AGM, we must choose between 2 choices which are something like (paraphrasing) “1. There are no fire safety items identified at the building” OR “2. there are fire safety items identified at the building”. If we choose 2, we must have a fire safety audit to confirm that the items are in working order, and a certificate issued.
Historically, we have always chosen 1, because our strata manager advised that, if we invited an audit and it identified issues, we would be obligated to fix them and that they can be expensive while having minimal practical effect on fire safety.
We recently changed strata managers. Our new strata manager said our previous manager was wrong, that we MUST legally choose 2, and undergo an audit, otherwise we break the law.
Who is right?
BTW: please note that we take fire safety seriously, and are not trying to avoid having a safe building, so please do not make comments such as “you should get it done for your own safety”. We simply want to know whether we are required to have a fire safety audit.
Thanks
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You don’t say where you are? Here’s what our City of Sydney council regulations say:
“Every year the owner of a building or premises must provide the City and Fire and Rescue NSW with a statement certifying all fire-safety measures work properly. This statement must be assessed by qualified personnel and be displayed prominently.”
https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/business/regulations/health-and-safety/fire-safety
Check your local council, I think you’ll find that you should be having your fire systems audited every year.
Again I’ll assume that RL is in NSW, where the Legislation that enables Councils to issue a Fire Safety Schedule as part of its Development Consent (DC) commenced in July 1988, so Multi-Unit Developments that were completed prior to that date are exempt from the requirement to undertake and Annual Fire Safety Inspection.
RL – The Fire Safety Schedule (FSS) that I’ve referred to contains the list of items to be annually inspected, so it stands to reason that if a strata building didn’t have a FSS at the time of Council’s DC, and there’ve been no Building Applications since lodged at the Plan where a FSS may be issued, and there’ve been no incidents where Fire & Rescue issued a FSS as part of a Fire Control Order, then there’s nothing to annually tick-off and report upon to Council – that’s why the link that tharra provided also says “A fire safety schedule is only applicable if any of the above occurred after 1988”.
So assuming no FSS, the advice provided by your first Strata Manager was absolutely correct, which doesn’t mean that your Owners Corporation (O/C) doesn’t cast a collective eye around its Common Property to check for fire-related hazards or even that it engages an experienced person to do that; but that’s prudent not compulsory action, and the outcome is not reportable outside of the O/C.
Be aware that some Strata Managers are guilt-tripping O/Cs into having fire safety audits undertaken, so if yours decides to go down that path, in the absence of a FSS it would be well advised to first obtain the Contractor’s Scope-of-Work (i.e. what precisely are they checking in the absence of a FSS) as well as a firm price.
Hi whale, we have received good advice via this forum in the past, so thank you. I am hoping that can you give me the reference of where strata buildings built and registered before 1988 are exempt from fire safety audit. I have seen you refer to it on previous occasions, but am receiving conflicting information from elsewhere. I am in nsw and owner of a 3 level unit block. We have just undertaken a fire safety audit inspection which will identify what needs to be done so our unit is compliant, but would really like to see where it is written that we do not have to do this.
Any of the Councils’ websites should provide sufficient proof, such as in the link to the City of Sydney’s website that tharra provided in post #2, where the following statement is included there:
Fire Safety Schedules list the measures required to be installed and the standard they need to achieve. A Fire Safety Schedule can be issued:
- by the City or an accredited certifier,
- by the City with a fire safety order,
- by the City in some cases with a development consent, such as for a change of use in an existing building.
A Fire Safety Schedule is only applicable if any of the above occurred after 1988.
Additionally, the significance of the date of 1st July 1988 is that it’s when Part (#59) titled Maintenance of Fire and Other Safety Measures was added to Ordinance 70 of the NSW Local Government Act (1919), under which Local Government was for the first time given the ability to require “essential fire safety measures” and “annual compliance certificates” within the Conditions of their Consents for Development Applications.
The above has now been superseded by Reg. 182 of the NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation (2000).
You mentioned in your last post that a recent fire safety audit inspection would make sure that your “unit is compliant”. I assume you meant so that the Common Property would be compliant, but again I wonder that if your Plan doesn’t have a Fire Safety Schedule (FSS), what fire-safety related items the Inspector is auditing, how they decide whether those get a pass or a fail, and how they determine what if any additional items are required.
Finally, as I mentioned before, the absence of a legal requirement to undertake annual inspections against a FSS doesn’t mean that your Owners Corporation (O/C) shouldn’t regularly cast a collective eye around its Common Property to check for fire-related hazards, or even that it engages a properly qualified person to do that against a scope-of-work provided by the O/C; but that’s prudent, not compulsory action, and the outcome is not externally reportable (i.e. outside of the O/C).
I think that this topic has just about run its course now; don’t you?
I’m on the EC of a 14 unit, 7 storey block built in 1970, and notice the fire safety inspection regulations change each year. Three years ago it was exit lighting, last year it was lever latches on the garage exit doors. But this year we changed companies and they have come up with each unit needing new doors. Firstly because they say the doors need to be self-closing, and secondly because the existing have asbestos content they can’t just drill into them.
Is this a new regulation? If not why didn’t the previous company insist? Personally I dislike the idea of my front door having a self-closer and I can imagine the number of lock-outs and needing a handy object to jamb the door open to get the shopping in. I’m well aware that the fire companies have a hand in updating the various codes to keep themselves in business. Please advise.
Murray – unless one or more of the items shown in the shaded box in my last post #5 has been applied to your Plan, then due to its date of registration (1970) there’s no requirement for the Owners Corporation (O/C) to arrange fire safety inspections other than for piece of mind, where any of an inspector’s reported “requirements” are actually suggestions.
So regarding the suggestion about self-closers being fitted to entry doors and their asbestos content, if those doors are in fact fire rated then they’re supposed to be kept closed in order to prevent draughts facilitating the passage of fire from one part of the building to another, and provided the asbestos is stable (i.e. within the original structure of the doors) then it’s not an issue.
Personally I wouldn’t worry about self-closers on entry doors because as you quite correctly state people will prop them open, but from a due-diligence perspective I’d certainly ensure that the O/C took a proactive stance to making residents aware of the fact entry doors must be kept closed, and why.
I am posting this primarily as a warning of what at least one Sydney based Council has decided to do in relation to compliance with CURRENT Fire Safety requirements, regardless of its legal ability to do so.
In previous FLAT CHAT posts relating to Fire Safety requirements for Unit Blocks built, it is clear that those buildings that had their Development Consent granted after 1/7/1988, the prevailing legislation enabled councils to issue a Fire Safety Schedule (FSS) as part of its Development Consent, and thus requires those buildings to comply with Fire Safety requirements [Annual Fire Safety Statements (Inspections)]. However, Development Consent prior to that date meant that there was NO legal requirement to comply with Current Fire Safety Requirements.
Our Strata Manager apparently received a letter from our local Council dated 11 June 2015 stating that our “Residential Flat Building” was required to provide to Council an “Annual Fire Safety Statement” by 30 July 2015. (Apparently this was the first “official” communication). (I obtained a copy from Council). Our building was erected in 1973, and has not changed. I had no knowledge about this matter until it appeared on the December AGM agenda as a motion that we approve work (expensive) to comply with the new Fire Safety requirement from Council. Apparently this following an inspection of each Unit by an external assessor engaged by the Strata Manager & Executive Committee in August 2015. (Only residents [not non-resident owners] were notified).
I wrote to the EC and Strata Manager prior to the AGM advising that I considered this was unlikely to be a valid legal requirement of council and quoted the relevant sections of past and current legislation, suggesting that Legal opinion be obtained on the matter first, which resulted in a response that “It’s a council requirement”.
I went to the local Council (Building Dept) and was told in response to my raising the pre 1/7/1988 status of our building which did not require the Annual Fire Safety Inspection, that they considered that the previous and current Act did permit them to impose the requirement for a Fire Safety inspection on Pre 1/7/1988 buildings, and that the Council did not want to be blamed if someone in the council area died in a Unit fire where Fire Safety measures were not installed. This being one reason why they were implementing the current Fire Safety requirement on existing buildings.
At the AGM I tried to argue the issue however the Strata Manager and the Executive Committee who had influence over the other attending owner occupiers would not accept there was doubt over the Councils position. To cut me off the Strata Manager told me that she had already obtained a Legal opinion (no offer to table it) and the council position was correct. I did not believe the Strata Manager’s statement to me, however I decided that there was no way I was going to prevail and to fight it further would be difficult and resisted, so accepted that I would need to bear about $1,600 in extra Sinking Fund levies to cover my units share of the costs to upgrade for Fire Safety. (30 units involved)
So the warning is: If you find this happening at your complex, you may have better luck than I, but if the Strata Manager and Executive Committee are not open minded and willing to listen and actually get a Legal opinion, and challenge the Council, it is going to cost big time.
I’d like to correct the comment by Winston, about the Fire Safety Inspection only applying to buildings older that around 1988. It is correct that strata buildings more recent that 1988 must all provide a Fire Safety Statement to the local council and the Fire brigade. But older buildings may also be required to provide this. The local council can issue an Order for this requirement to apply to older buildings. If this happens, then the same provisions apply to older as to the newer buildings. The section of the law that governs this is when the council serves the owners with an “Order No. 6 pursuant to the table in Section 121B of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979”. This is settled law, and you would be wasting your money trying to overturn this provision. – Sorry Winston, you are in the wrong about this.
Unofficially, (according to our building’s fire consultant), because of the recent deaths of some people from fires in high rise strata apartment blocks, the government is pressuring councils to bring all apartment buildings up to scratch with their fire safety.
Our building, built in the early 1970’s, was notified similarly in 2014. So far, we have had the fire safety audit done, and the Order is due to be made final soon (early 2017), so the council is being reasonable in negotiating the terms of the order. Our building also had a major fire in one unit, in 2013, so we suspect that is also a factor.
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