Community & Business
20 May, 2022
Crackdown on external cladding
OWNERS of buildings in the Mareeba Shire who have not complied with the State Government’s regulations on external cladding will be prosecuted by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC) after the council authorised it to take action.
The State regulations were legislated in 2019 after an horrific fire at the Grenfell Tower apartment building in the United Kingdom, in which 72 people died.
Due to the risks posed by combustible materials in external cladding, owners of particular private buildings were required to undertake an assessment of the material used on external walls of their building in a three-part process. A State taskforce set up following the tragedy revealed there may be as many as 12,000 buildings across Queensland that would require assessment by the building owner, private certifier or other building professional.
Under the new Safer Buildings Program, owners of private buildings that were identified were required to give three documents – namely, a combustible cladding checklist, a building fire safety risk assessment and a fire engineer statement – to the QBCC by 3 May last year. A report to Mareeba Shire Council advised that the QBCC was aware of a number of private buildings within the shire that had failed to comply with their obligations and the QBCC now planned to prosecute them.
In order to do this, the QBCC required council to authorise the prosecution as the prosecution power in Section 265(2) of the Building Act 1975 did not address offences against Part 4A of the regulation.
A spokesperson from the QBCC said buildings owners had had three years to comply with the new rules. “Building owners were able to apply for extensions of time prior to the final compliance date of 3 May 2021,” he said. “Under the Building Regulation, the QBCC can apply for a court order requiring owners to provide the required documentation to identify if the building contains combustible cladding. “All privately owned class 2-9 buildings with building approvals between 1 January 1994 to 1 October 2018, were required to complete the Safer Buildings Program and failure to comply could also result in fines of up to $23,020.95.”
