Fire Safety Upgrade Orders
As part of modern day requirements, buildings (both new and existing) are expected to adhere to current, stringent fire safety regulations. As part of any routine assessment, Council can issue a fire safety Order if a building doesn’t comply with fire safety regulations.
The Environmental Planning & Assessment Act 1979 gives Councils the power to issue fire safety upgrade Orders, and Leichhardt Council uses the standards described in the Building Code of Australia (BCA) as a benchmark to determine fire safety criteria. Council can issue these Orders requiring compliance at any time.
Any sort of application submitted to Council for works to a building is likely to trigger a fire safety assessment, even if a single-unit owner in a block of flats for example puts in a request for a minor change.
There are usually 4 main triggers for Council to audit a building’s fire compliance – either the owners approach Council themselves; or Council receives a complaint about fire safety; or Council checks fire compliance as part of an assessment of any applications lodged; or Council may target specific high-risk buildings that are identified as part of a fire safety upgrading program.
The general intent of most fire safety upgrading strategies is to address the areas of the building that pose the greatest risk to life safety of building occupants; fire spread; and intervention by responding emergency services. Most upgrading strategies are described with the aim of arriving at a schedule of works to allow a level of fire safety to be achieved within the building that will match the intent of the BCA.
A Fire Safety Upgrade Order will detail a list of items that must be addressed, and will specify a timeframe in which this must be achieved by. The Order then becomes a kind of “contractual agreement” between the owner and Council, so if the terms of the Order aren’t adhered to then Council has a fall-back option of pursuing a further course of action to have the Order complied with.
In some cases, there is an advantage in Council serving a fire safety Order as it circumvents the need to lodge a separate Development Application for fire safety works that may involve structural building work or physical alteration to a building, the nature of which would ordinarily require Development Consent to be obtained and a more lengthy process to be endured.
Through this process of serving Orders, all existing building stock throughout the municipality will eventually be captured and rolled into current legislation and made to comply with higher more superior standards, so as to optimise fire safety levels for building occupants, building owners, and the community in general.