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NSW Building Bill 2026 passes Parliament

The NSW Build­ing (Approvals and Prac­ti­tion­ers) Bill 2026 (the Bill) passed through Par­lia­ment on 4 August 2026. Mark Glynn, Construction & Infrastructure Partner at Swaab, provides an update on the comprehensive legislation, highlighting that forthcoming regulations will outline the finer detail and the practical implications for practitioners.

The Build­ing (Approvals and Prac­ti­tion­ers) Bill 2026 (the Bill) passed through Par­lia­ment on Tues­day after­noon 4 August 2026. The Bill is await­ing assent from the Gov­er­nor and will com­mence on a date set by proclamation.

Much of the prac­ti­cal oper­a­tion and impli­ca­tion for those affect­ed by the pass­ing of this Bill will be deter­mined by the reg­u­la­tions which are yet to be made and pub­lished. These reg­u­la­tions, when made, will pro­vide the details on the oper­a­tion of the Bill and how and who it will affect. The tim­ing for the mak­ing of the reg­u­la­tions is not known.

The Bill will:

• intro­duce a new Build­ing (Approvals and Prac­ti­tion­ers) Act 2026;
• repeal the Build­ing and Devel­op­ment Cer­ti­fiers Act 2018;
• repeal of the Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020;
• repeal of the Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning and Assess­ment (Devel­op­ment Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and Fire Safe­ty) Reg­u­la­tion 2021; and
• make sig­nif­i­cant changes to Part 6 of the Envi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning and Assess­ment Act 1979(the EP&A Act).

The Bill pro­vides a new, con­sol­i­dat­ed frame­work for build­ing approvals, prac­ti­tion­er reg­is­tra­tion, enforce­ment and account­abil­i­ty, replac­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing exist­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and prac­ti­tion­er regimes.

The Bill also, for the first time, recog­nis­es and pro­vides for reg­u­la­tion of pre­fab­ri­cat­ed and mod­u­lar con­struc­tion. Off-site mod­u­lar con­struc­tion is stat­ed by the NSW Gov­ern­ment as a key to boost­ing hous­ing sup­ply on NSW with the stat­ed poten­tial of reduc­ing build­ing costs and improv­ing the rate of sup­ply of homes being built.

The Bill:

• recog­nis­es mod­ern meth­ods of con­struc­tion in law by defin­ing ​‘pre­fab­ri­cat­ed buildings’;
• inte­grates pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ings into the build­ing approval sys­tem; and
• pro­vides reg­u­la­tions for the man­u­fac­ture, sup­ply trans­port. deliv­ery and instal­la­tion of pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ings includ­ing the intro­duc­tion of ​‘pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing dec­la­ra­tions’ and ​‘pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing instruc­tions’ to be to be pro­vid­ed by the pre­fab manufacturer.

Oth­er fea­tures of the Bill:

1. Con­sol­i­dates exist­ing build­ing approval, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and prac­ti­tion­er reg­u­la­tion require­ments into a sin­gle, con­sol­i­dat­ed approvals and com­pli­ance framework.Ref­er­ences to con­struc­tion cer­tifi­cates (CC’s) and occu­pa­tion cer­tifi­cates (OC’s) will be removed from the EP&A Act and will be replaced in the Bill by build­ing approvals and com­ple­tion approvals issued by an ​‘approval authority’.Build­ing approvals will replace con­struc­tion certificates.Com­ple­tion approvals will replace occu­pa­tion certificates.
2. Amends the Res­i­den­tial Apart­ment Build­ings (Com­pli­ance and Enforce­ment Pow­ers) Act 2020 to pro­vide estab­lish­ing of a new scheme for the res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes involv­ing build­ing work by Build­ing Com­mis­sion NSW. The reg­u­la­tions estab­lish­ing this dis­pute res­o­lu­tion scheme must be estab­lished by 31 Decem­ber 2026.
3. Retains the statu­to­ry duty of care imposed on per­sons car­ry­ing out con­struc­tion work to take rea­son­able care to avoid eco­nom­ic loss caused by defects.Despite amend­ments sought by the NSW oppo­si­tion to restore the pro­por­tion­ate lia­bil­i­ty defences to claims for breach of this statu­to­ry duty fol­low­ing the High Court’s deci­sion in Paf­burn and the NSW Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Kapi­la v Mon­u­ment Build­ing Group, such a claim remains unable to be appor­tioned between mul­ti­ple con­cur­rent wrongdoers.
4. Con­tem­plates that the reg­u­la­tions may mod­i­fy how the Bill and the Home Build­ing Act 1989 apply to pre­fab­ri­cat­ed buildings.To what extent (if at all) will the reg­u­la­tions address the inter­ac­tion between the statu­to­ry war­ranties implied into every con­tract to do res­i­den­tial build­ing work and the statu­to­ry reliance on a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing dec­la­ra­tion afford­ed by the Bill to a per­son car­ry­ing out build­ing work involv­ing pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing on a pre­fab­ri­cat­ed build­ing declaration.
5. Pro­vides for sav­ings and tran­si­tion­al pro­vi­sions to be made by the reg­u­la­tions upon the enact­ment of the Bill.

As always, the reg­u­la­tions will be keen­ly await­ing to pro­vide the fin­er detail. The Swaab Con­struc­tion and Stra­ta team will continue to provide updates on the tim­ing of the com­mence­ment of this Bill and the mak­ing of the all-impor­tant regulations.