Introduction to the ACT Building Regulatory System

About this course.

In the ACT, building work is regulated by the Territory government under its own building legislation — principally a Building Act and supporting regulation — administered through Access Canberra, with the Construction Occupations Registrar holding key statutory functions for licensing and building control. Planning is dealt with separately under the Territory's planning legislation, administered by the Territory's planning authority. The technical requirements for how buildings must be designed and built come from the National Construction Code, which the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) develops and which the ACT gives legal effect through its own law. Because this is a Territory system, it differs from every state; this module is general information and not legal advice.

The most important structural fact about the ACT is that it is a self-governing territory with a single tier of government. There are no local councils. In the states, building and development control is often shared between state regulators and local government, and a council frequently acts as the permit or consent authority. In the ACT, the Legislative Assembly and the Territory government perform both the state-type and the local-government-type functions. That means the bodies you deal with for approvals, licensing and enforcement are Territory bodies rather than a council, and it makes the system comparatively centralised. Anyone arriving from a state should not assume there is a "council" step; in the ACT that role sits with the Territory.