Most owners corporations in New South Wales owe an annual fire safety obligation, and most of the committees that owe it assume their fire contractor is quietly taking care of it. That assumption is the problem. Under the NSW system the contractor who inspects the building is specifically not permitted to issue the statement.
The obligation sits with the owners corporation. Here is what it actually involves.
The annual fire safety statement
In most cases a strata building needs a fire safety statement every year. One statement covers the whole building, the individual lots and the common property together. It is not issued per unit.
Some building types sit outside it. Townhouses, villas and detached houses are commonly exempt, along with Class 1a buildings, Class 10 structures and temporary structures. If your scheme is a townhouse complex, check before assuming the obligation applies, and check again if anything has been built on the site since.
Who inspects, and who signs
These are two different people, and the split is deliberate.
The inspection has to be done by an accredited practitioner (fire safety), and the accreditation has to cover the specific measures being assessed. Accreditation for one measure does not qualify someone to assess another.
The statement itself is then issued by the building owner or their agent. The practitioner who carried out the inspection cannot issue it. NSW built the process this way so that owners stay directly engaged rather than signing off on a document they never read.
For a strata scheme that means the owners corporation, or the strata manager if the committee has appointed them to prepare and submit it. A contractor who offers to handle the whole thing end to end, inspection and statement together, is describing something the framework does not allow.
The fire safety schedule decides the scope
The schedule is the list of essential fire safety measures that apply to your building. Hydrants, hose reels, alarms, emergency lighting, exit signage, fire doors, whatever was required when the building was approved or last altered.
Every measure on that schedule has to be assessed, and the statement has to cover all of them. So the schedule sets the scope of the whole exercise, which makes it the first document to find rather than the last.
If nobody on the committee has a copy, the local council holds one, and a previous year’s statement will list the measures as well. Schemes that have changed strata managers more than once are the ones most likely to have lost it.
AS 1851 now applies
Since 13 February 2026, inspection, testing and servicing of fire safety systems must comply with Australian Standard AS 1851. That date has passed, so this is a current requirement rather than something on the horizon.
Committees on long-standing maintenance contracts are worth a check here. An arrangement written years ago may describe a servicing regime that no longer matches what the standard now expects.
Where the statement goes
Two places, not one. The statement is lodged with the local council and with Fire and Rescue NSW.
Lodging with the council and stopping there is a common miss, and it leaves the scheme non-compliant despite having done nearly all of the work.
How this differs from Queensland
Schemes near the border, and managers running portfolios on both sides of it, get caught by the assumption that one regime resembles the other. It does not.
Queensland works through the Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008, which imposes a written fire and evacuation plan, evacuation signage above a floor area threshold, annual evacuation practice and record keeping. There is no annual statement lodged with a council in that model.
New South Wales works through an annual statement, an accredited assessment of scheduled measures, and lodgement with two bodies. A Queensland compliance file will not satisfy a NSW obligation, and the reverse is equally true.
Common questions
Can the strata manager do it?
The committee can appoint the strata manager to prepare and submit the statement on the owners corporation’s behalf. That covers the issuing side. It does not cover the inspection, which still needs an accredited practitioner.
Our townhouse complex has never had one. Is that a problem?
Possibly not. Townhouses and villas are commonly exempt. Worth confirming against your fire safety schedule rather than relying on the fact it has never come up, because the exemption turns on building classification, not on what the scheme is called.
What happens if the statement is late?
Non-compliance is an offence and councils do enforce it. The more immediate exposure is usually insurance and liability, because an overdue statement is documentary evidence that the measures were not verified.
Do we still need evacuation diagrams?
Diagrams and signage may appear on your fire safety schedule as measures to be assessed, which is a different thing from the standalone signage duty Queensland imposes. Read the schedule for your building rather than applying the Queensland rule.
Getting the scheme’s position established
The starting point is your fire safety schedule, because it decides everything else. Your local council holds a copy, and Fire and Rescue NSW publishes guidance on the statement itself.
Seymour Consultants works with bodies corporate and owners corporations from the Queensland border south to Port Macquarie, preparing capital works fund forecasts, Part 5 reports and the other compliance reporting those schemes are obliged to hold. Call 07 5573 4011 or request a quote.
