The certificate’s names, state by state

In the four places this guide draws, each document has rules behind it and rules in front of it. What differs is the name, and the name matters. It is the word you need when reading a contract, a permit condition or a council record, and the word a regulator's own site files the rule under.

New South Wales: an occupation certificate

In New South Wales the document is an occupation certificate, and it sits inside a family of certificates one class of professional issues. Registered building surveyors issue certificates under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, and the list named on Building Commission NSW's page runs through construction certificates, complying development certificates and occupation certificates. 1

Two consequences are drawn on the line this guide belongs to. Behind the document, the principal certifier attends the site to carry out mandatory inspections at certain stages, 1 and if a mandatory inspection is missed, the certifier may have to refuse to issue the occupation certificate. 1 In front of it, once an occupation certificate is issued for a residential apartment building (class 2), the developer can require purchasers to settle their purchases. 2

Victoria: an occupancy permit, or a certificate of final inspection

Victoria's rule names two documents, and both appear in the rule that matters most to a homeowner: Consumer Affairs Victoria states that the statutory building warranties apply to building work for up to 10 years after the date the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection was issued, even if the property sells several times. 3

Victorian law also uses the occupancy permit as a gate on possession in one particular case. For an off-the-plan apartment, the vendor may neither ask the buyer to take possession nor allow it, until the permit exists for the lot, or for that part of the building that holds it. 4

The pages this guide is written from do not name who issues either Victorian document, so this guide does not draw a Victorian issuer on the line. It is one of the four gaps noted below.

Tasmania: the Certificate of Occupancy

Tasmania's consumer building information uses a different name with its own capital letters, and it is as direct as a rule gets about when a building may be used: for a new house, an extension or an addition, two conditions have to be satisfied first, the permit conditions and the receipt of the Certificate of Occupancy. 5

The same Tasmanian page gives the document a second, quieter job. Where nobody can establish the date of practical completion, the warranty clock is instead wound from the grant of the occupancy permit, or of the approval for the work. 5 So in Tasmania the certificate is not only the key to the front door: where the ordinary starting date for the warranty cannot be shown, the occupancy permit becomes the date the clock runs from. That start is drawn among the clocks in the guide to the warranty periods.

The ACT: a certificate of occupancy, with a condition attached

The Australian Capital Territory's Planning pages use certificate of occupancy in lower case, and one of their rules shows how much can hang from the document. A property developer licence must be held throughout the time that residential building work is being undertaken, from when a building approval is issued until a certificate of occupancy is issued. 6 The licence must be attached to the work in another sense as well: a certificate of occupancy must not be issued if a condition of new section 28AA of the Building Act is not met, which means the property developer licence must have been attached to the work done on the regulated residential building. 6

That is the strongest form the line takes anywhere in this guide: not a certificate that follows the work, but one that is barred until a separate obligation has been satisfied.

The four the line does not draw

Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory each sign completed buildings off in their own way, and this guide does not name the document in any of them, because the official pages it is written from do not name it. Where a page is silent, the line says so rather than filling the gap.

Queensland is the one of the four those pages do speak to, at the level of one city. The Brisbane City Council's building approval guidance tells an applicant to contact a licensed building certifier to organise building approval, and to supply scaled and detailed plans prepared by a draftsperson or architect. 7 That names the office that organises the approval, and the plans the office needs. It does not name the document the office issues when the building is finished, and this guide will not guess at it.

For Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory the pages this guide holds speak to other parts of the same life, such as the warranty and insurance clocks in the guide to when protection starts. Their own regulators are the place to check the name of the document.

The four names beside each other

NSW

occupation certificate, issued by a registered building surveyor among the certificates the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 names. 1

VIC

occupancy permit, or certificate of final inspection, named together in Consumer Affairs Victoria's rule on when the building warranties expire. 3

TAS

Certificate of Occupancy, the document that ends the wait to move in. 5

ACT

certificate of occupancy, which the property developer licensing rules use as the end point of the licence, and bar where a section 28AA condition is unmet. 6

No single official page in this guide's sources lists all four names, and none of them calls its own name the national one, because there is no national one. That is the whole point of the comparison: a reader looking for what was signed, or asking a council or a certifier about it, should use the word their state's law uses. Asking for the certificate of occupancy in New South Wales will not find an occupation certificate, and in Tasmania the capital letters are the state's own usage, not a typographic accident.

What the four have in common is the thing this site is built around: each is one event with rules stacked behind it and rules switching on in front of it. Those two stacks are drawn in the guide to what has to be in place and the guide to what changes the day it is issued.