Review of home building legislation
Comments closed 18 August 2012
What is this about?
The NSW Government is carrying out a broad and comprehensive review of the NSW Home Building Act 1989 to ensure the Act is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Top of pageWhat's happening?
As a first step an issues paper was prepared which explored the main areas considered in need of reform by stakeholders and government. The purpose of the paper was to facilitate public consultation on the identified issues and to garner public and industry opinion on the extent to which reform of the Act can assist in the re-generation of the residential building sector, and also how it can continue to meet the needs of the State’s homeowners.
The issues paper was released for a 6-week consultation period on 3 July 2012 and submissions to the paper closed on 18 August 2012. Over 130 full submissions were made to the Paper, in addition 502 online questionnaires were submitted.
View the list of full submissions received during the public consultation.
Following the consultation period a thorough analysis and examination of all stakeholder suggestions and submissions was undertaken. As a result of this consultation process it will be possible to proceed with proposed reforms on the vast majority of issues contained in the issues paper. However, more work was required on several of the regulatory areas where the matters under consideration and the suggestions for reform are significantly complex.
Consequently, late in 2012, a selection of stakeholders participated in a series of roundtable discussions on the key issues of statutory warranties, dispute resolution and home warranty insurance. The roundtables received a high level of support and enthusiasm from all involved and will inform the next step of the review.
Work is continuing on developing a package of reforms, as part of this work the better regulation principles will be applied to any developed proposal for reform.
To ensure that we get the reforms right it is anticipated that a further round of public consultation will take place some-time in the first half of 2013.
This website will provide further information on the review as it becomes available.
Key dates
The closing date for comments and submissions was 18 August 2012.
Important documents
Reform of the Home Building Act 1989 issues paper (PDF size: 839kb)
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