The role of Private Certifiers

It often happens that Council approves a DA with conditions that are the end point of a lengthy discussion at a Council DA meeting in which both sides have had to compromise. Construction then commences. As the building emerges the neighbours find, to their horror, that the conditions are not being complied with. What redress do the neighbours have?

If a private certifier is involved they should in the first instance contact the private certifier. Three things could happen as a result of this attempt.

1. The PC doesn’t return your calls
2. The PC agrees with you and orders the work to be redone
3. The PC interprets the matter differently from you and claims the condition is met
4. The certifier agrees with you but says that it is too trivial a matter to deal with

Let’s take the problem responses in turn.

Failure to return calls: Make a complaint to the Building Professional Board (BPB) – you will need to keep a diary.

Knowingly approve despite not meeting condition: For this you will need to trigger disciplinary action starting with a form complaint to the BPB. You will need to provide evidence in the form of extracts from the condition of consent, diary entries of phone conversations and photographs to clearly establish that the work approved was contrary to the the conditions of consent and that the matter was drawn to the certifiers attention. At this point you should inform Council of your intended action, but note that thhe responsibility for auditing the work of certifiers lies with the BPB, not Council. However in extreme cases Council can issue a notice to suspend work on the project until the matter is resolved.

Matter of interpretation: This is the most likely situation. You believe what has been approved is contrary to the condition, but the certifier argues that the work meets the condition. The only resolution in this case is to take the matter to court

Certifier agrees, but say matter is too trivial: Again your only avenue of challenge is via a complaint to the Building Professional Board

If you want to know who the Private Certifier is, go to the DA tracker, type in the address, then on the over page you will find the address is itslef a link. Click on this, then he Applications Tab and you should get some signed correspondence from the provate certifier.