The World Organisation of Building Officials supports both the concepts of fairness and equality and as such welcomes the consultation proposals for minimum accessibility standards for housing within their National Codes.

Members and fellow professionals have the oppportunity to contribute to these developments.

The Consultation RIS addressing a proposal to include minimum accessibility standards for housing in the NCC is now open for public consultation.

In 2017, the Building Ministers’ Forum (BMF), with the support of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), directed the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) to undertake a regulatory impact analysis on the possible inclusion of accessibility requirements for housing into the National Construction Code (NCC). Since this time, ABCB has undertaken extensive consultation and in 2018 released an Options Paper, and subsequently released an Options Paper Consultation Report, that sought stakeholder input into the objectives, options and terminology to inform the development of a Consultation Regulation Impact Statement (RIS).

The Consultation RIS is now available for public consultation. It examines regulatory options that are based on the Livable Housing Design Guidelines (LHDG) Silver-level and Gold-level specifications, as well as a ‘Gold-plus’ specification developed through stakeholder consultation.

The ABCB has also released a project overview and RIS explainer document that explains the project, its timelines and the RIS process.

Feedback from stakeholders will be used to inform the Final RIS. The Consultation RIS and its supporting documents can be downloaded from the ABCB’s Consultation Hub.

Providing comment

Responses to questions on the Consultation RIS, outlined in the consultation form, are invited until 11:59PM AEST Monday 31 August 2020. Only comments submitted using the online form will be considered.

If you have a question about the project, please submit an online enquiry (use the ‘general’ option).