The Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026 has cleared both houses of NSW Parliament. Most of the coverage has focused on modular housing. The bigger change for builders is that the certificates sitting at the centre of almost every job are being replaced.
NSW Parliament has passed the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026.
The Bill was introduced to Parliament in May and passed the Legislative Assembly on 28 May 2026. It has since cleared the Legislative Council, with the NSW Government announcing passage on 5 August 2026. According to the NSW Government, the reforms are intended to make it faster and cheaper to build by supporting modern methods of construction and streamlining approvals.
That framing has driven most of the coverage. Prefabricated housing, faster approvals, a nation leading regulatory framework.
For builders working in NSW, the more consequential change is quieter. The new Act repeals two Acts and three regulations, and replaces the certificates that sit at the centre of almost every residential job.
Construction certificates and occupation certificates are being replaced
Under the new Act, a building approval is required before building work involving the erection of a building can be carried out, whether that work sits under a development consent or is exempt development prescribed by the regulations.
At the other end of the job, a completion approval takes the place of the occupation certificate.
The function of each is broadly familiar. The terminology is not. Construction certificate and occupation certificate are embedded in contracts, progress claim schedules, lending conditions, insurance documentation, council correspondence and the way builders explain the process to clients. All of that language now has a use by date.
The function is broadly familiar. The terminology is not. And terminology is what sits in every contract, every progress claim schedule and every lending condition.
The Act also formalises staged approvals. Where building work is carried out in stages, a separate building approval application is made for each stage. Section 32 also allows an application for a completion approval to be made for part of a building rather than the whole. That is the mechanism behind the government’s stated aim of letting people move in earlier.
One provision is worth noting for anyone who has ever tried to regularise work after the fact. It becomes an offence for an approval authority to issue or vary a building approval for work that has already commenced, unless a post commencement authorisation applies. The pathway exists, but it is now explicitly framed as an exception with costs attached.
The DBP Act is repealed. The duty of care is not.
Section 202 of the Act repeals five instruments. The Building and Development Certifiers Act 2018 and its regulation. The Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 and its regulation. And the Environmental Planning and Assessment (Development Certification and Fire Safety) Regulation 2021.
The Design and Building Practitioners Act has been unpopular with industry since it commenced. Its repeal will read to some as relief. It should not.
The statutory duty of care carries across almost untouched. Under Part 8 of the new Act, a person who carries out construction work has a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid economic loss caused by defects in or related to the building and arising from that work. The duty is owed to each owner of the land and to each subsequent owner. It applies whether or not there was a contract. It cannot be delegated. Parties cannot contract out of it. Owners corporations can recover the cost of rectifying defects, including reasonable alternative accommodation costs.
Design compliance declarations survive as well. Where an application for building approval involves a building element for a building prescribed by the regulations, it must be accompanied by the regulated design and a declaration made by a registration holder. The obligations attaching to the registration of building practitioners have been re-homed rather than removed.
Anyone reading the repeal as a reduction in exposure has read it the wrong way round.
Prefabricated buildings now have a legal definition
Section 12 defines a prefabricated building as something manufactured away from the building site that is either a substantially complete building or room, or a modular building component that will become a building element when properly installed and cannot be inspected without destructive testing or destructive opening once it is in place. The regulations can add to that list.
The second limb is the important one. It captures the actual compliance problem with factory built work: once the module is on site and connected, you cannot see inside it without pulling it apart. The Act builds its prefabricated building framework around that fact rather than around the marketing category.
Two exclusions matter. A moveable dwelling is expressly not a prefabricated building. And Schedule 4 removes the definitions of manufactured home and manufactured home estate from the Local Government Act 1993. UDIA NSW has welcomed the Bill for removing duplicate regulation affecting manufactured homes in land lease communities.
The legislative framework now sits alongside the funding. The NSW Government has opened two grant programs for MMC manufacturers and is inviting local and international operators to partner on a large scale prefabrication facility. The 2026-27 Budget commits $32.3 million to implementing the new approvals system, including integration with the NSW Planning Portal and a pilot of AI tools for licence application processing.
Certifier penalties rise sharply
The maximum penalty for carrying out relevant approvals work while holding a conflict of interest is 10,000 penalty units. At the current NSW penalty unit value of $110, that is $1.1 million. The government puts the previous maximum at $33,000.
The offence applies to individuals, and also to a director or employee of a body corporate where the company itself, or another director or employee authorised to do approvals work, holds the conflict.
Conviction also triggers automatic suspension of registration for 120 days, or longer if the Secretary specifies a longer period in writing. For a certifier, the suspension is likely to bite harder than the fine.
The question the release does not answer
When.
The commencement clause provides that two items in Schedule 3 commence on assent. Everything else commences on a day or days to be appointed by proclamation. There is no fixed start date in the Act.
Several operative parts also depend on regulations that have not been made. The design compliance declaration requirement applies to a building prescribed by the regulations, and no such class currently exists. The dispute resolution framework the government has promoted is also worth reading carefully. It does not appear in the new Act. It appears in Schedule 5, as an amendment inserting a regulation making power into section 68 of the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020. That power allows regulations to establish a scheme for dispute resolution by the Secretary, and to require the scheme to be used before a dispute goes before a court or tribunal. No such regulations have been made.
That location matters. The Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 applies only to residential apartment building work, meaning class 2 buildings and, since 2023, class 3 and 9c buildings. It is not repealed by the new Act. On the face of the Bill, a dispute resolution scheme made under that power would be confined to the same territory. Builders working on detached housing should not read the dispute resolution announcement as applying to them until the regulations say otherwise.
The Act also requires the Minister to review it after five years and table a report within two years of that point.
So the position as at today is straightforward. The framework is settled. The commencement date is not. The regulations that determine who is actually captured are not written.
THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE
The prefab headline is the easy story. The terminology change is the one that will land on desks.
Every NSW builder has documents, templates and client explanations built around construction certificates and occupation certificates. Those words are going away. The replacement framework is not radically different in function, which is precisely why it will be easy to underestimate.
The other thing worth sitting with: repealing the Design and Building Practitioners Act does not reduce anyone’s exposure. The duty of care moved house. It did not leave.
Frequently asked questions
It has passed both houses of NSW Parliament. The NSW Government announced passage on 5 August 2026. Passage is the final parliamentary step, but a Bill becomes an Act on assent and its provisions take effect on commencement, which are separate stages.
No date has been set. Two items in Schedule 3 commence on assent. The rest of the Act commences on a day or days to be appointed by proclamation. Several parts also require regulations that have not yet been made.
Building approvals replace construction certificates, and completion approvals replace occupation certificates. Building work carried out in stages requires a separate building approval application for each stage, and completion approvals can be issued for part of a building.
The Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 is repealed by the new Act, but the statutory duty of care is re-enacted in Part 8. It is owed to each owner and each subsequent owner of the land, applies whether or not there is a contract, cannot be delegated, and cannot be contracted out of.
A prefabricated building is something manufactured away from the site that is either a substantially complete building or room, or a modular component that becomes a building element when installed and cannot be inspected without destructive testing or destructive opening. Moveable dwellings are excluded, and the regulations can add or remove items.
The Good Builder tracks regulatory change across every Australian state and territory. Follow for ongoing coverage of building legislation, approvals and compliance.
General information only. This article is general industry commentary and does not constitute legal, financial or regulatory advice. Builders and construction professionals should seek independent professional advice about how legislative changes apply to their circumstances. Sources: Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026 (NSW), first print; NSW Government ministerial release, 5 August 2026; Property Council of Australia media release, 5 August 2026.
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