The Northpoint Rise apartment complex in Castle Hill. Credit:Louise Kennerley In February, life-threatening fire safety deficiencies were discovered in Northpoint Rise, a 39-unit apartment complex in Castle Hill, which was built in the past three years. Professor Ian Bailey, SC, chair of the Society of Construction Law Australia and a barrister specialising in construction disputes, said the government's piecemeal approach to reform was "incomplete and ill-considered" and would do little to fix the systemic problems which had led to a "forest of defective buildings" in NSW. "There are endless buildings out there now where there could be further fires because there isn't a sufficient process of certification," Professor Ian Bailey said. "The government has to find a way out of this mess. This should have happened 12 months ago."

Life-threatening fire safety deficiencies were found in the Northpoint Rise apartment complex. Credit:Louise Kennerley The fire in London's Grenfell Tower last week catapulted the issue of fire safety to the forefront of the Berejiklian government's agenda, prompting it to announce an inter-agency strike force to carry out fire safety inspections of high-rise apartment buildings across the state. It is also understood Minister for Better Regulation Matthew Kean is working on a building product safety scheme, which will likely include the power to prevent the use of unsafe building products, including dangerous cladding. However, one of the broadly acknowledged problems in the construction sector is the system where private businesses, or certifiers, are contracted to ensure buildings meet their legal requirements. Councils and industry experts have been warning non-compliant and unsafe buildings, including buildings with inadequate fire safety systems, are routinely signed off by private certifiers as ready to be occupied.

Inspection of Sydney building finds 'life-threatening' deficiencies Northpoint Rise was signed off in 2014 as compliant by private certifier, Terry West, and units have since sold for over $2 million. But an inspection of the Northpoint Rise by Fire and Rescue NSW in February, triggered after residents raised concerns with The Hills Council, found a fire hydrant system had been installed backwards, numerous fire hose reels not commissioned or poorly maintained, and door handles on fire escape doors were capable of falling off "which would prevent persons from evacuating the premise in the case of a fire". "How big is this problem in Sydney when you consider the scale of building out there," the general manager of The Hills Council, Michael Edgar, said. "Do we really have to wait for people to die in fires to find this out?"

Stephen Netting, manager of fire safety compliance at Fire and Rescue NSW, described the non-compliance issues at Northpoint Rise as "life-threatening", and something his team regularly encountered in other buildings. "We see a lot of buildings like this. We have in the order of about 350 fire safety concerns at the moment." The council wrote to Mr Kean and Planning Minister Anthony Roberts in April requesting an investigation into the role of private certifiers "given the numerous instances where council has had to act as a result of errors made by private certifiers." The council also expressed "serious concern" about the performance of the Building Professionals Board, which is responsible for investing complaints against certifiers. At the time he certified Northpoint Rise, Mr West had been the subject of six previous complaints to Building Professionals Board, including two involving fire safety breaches. He was fined $10,000 in May last year, in a complaint which took over two years to resolve, for approving a building which did not have key fire safety measures, including smoke detectors.

Lambert Report highlights well-documented issues The government has been acutely aware of these systemic problems in the construction industry since it was handed the Lambert Report in October 2015. The Lambert Report is the ninth review into the NSW building sector commissioned by NSW governments in the past 15 years. And as the report acknowledged, there is "fatigue and frustration at the number of reviews undertaken and the lack of progress in addressing the well-documented problems". The report identifies systemic problems in building regulation in NSW, including "a lack of clarity about the roles, responsibilities, functions and accountability of private certifiers", and an "inherent conflict" between the regulatory role of the certifier and their commercial relationship with developers. It also delivered a damning assessment of the Buildings Professionals Board, finding it had a "significant backlog" of complaints, often took 12 months or longer to investigate a matter, and undertook no proactive audits of certifiers.

After taking almost one year to formally respond to the report, the government announced in September it would proceed with a package of "priority reforms". Among them, it promised to overhaul the regulation of certifiers by early 2017 through the complete re-writing of the Building Professionals Act. However, the replacement legislation is still yet to be drafted, and the government is on track to miss its own deadline to introduce the final bill into Parliament by end of the year. A further 70 recommendations have gone without a response and no timetable for implementation. When asked about the delay, a spokeswoman for NSW Fair Trading said "work had commenced on the re-write" but other key planning reforms had taken priority, namely amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. She said work would "continue on the re-write of the Building Professional Act once the planning reforms are finalised" so as to ensure the reforms "work together cohesively", but declined to confirm an expected timeline.

A further package of fire safety regulations, announced in response to the Lambert Report, are still waiting to be signed off by the state government. However, some progress has been made to consolidate the confusing web of regulations through the creation of two new bodies: the Building and Construction Service, and the Building Regulators Committee. And work is underway to facilitate the real-time reporting of data by private certifiers and councils on the certification work they do. A better system, Professor Bailey said, would centralise responsibility for building laws under one government agency, ensuring consistent certification of standards throughout the construction process. "If certifiers are inspecting buildings which are defective, what is it that permits developers to construct substandard buildings in the first place?" "To proceed in this piecemeal way is not good government or responsible economic government and it is not in the interest of NSW."

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