Pool Safety Managements Plans for Class 3 Buildings in Queensland
Pool Safety Managements Plans Audits
We can audit your existing PSMP and provide an expert option of your existing safety measures’ performance as detailed in your pool safety management plan. If required, we can amend or update your existing PSMP and ensure these changes are implemented effectively to achieve and appropriately provide for the safety of young children in and around the pool area.
This expert report can be used in support of your annual PSMP renewal with the QBCC.
We can provide audits and reports to all parts of Queensland.
What is a Class 3 Building?
A Class 3 building is a residential building which is a common place of long-term or transient living for a number of unrelated persons, including:
- a boarding-house, guest house, hostel, lodging-house or backpackers’ accommodation
- a residential part of a hotel or motel
- a residential part of a school
- accommodation for the aged, children or people with disabilities
- a residential part of a health-care building which accommodates members of staff
- a residential part of a detention centre
Pool owners
An owner of a pool on regulated land is required to ensure their pool complies with the pool safety laws. Owners of pools associated with class 3 buildings were required to have either a valid pool safety certificate or an approved pool safety management plan in effect for their pools before 1 June 2011. Pool owners must also continue to comply with either the pool safety standard or an approved pool safety management plan. Where owners elect to use a pool safety management plan to comply, applications to continue to use the plan must be made annually.
Under the BA, the owner of a pool associated with a class 3 building may use an approved pool safety management plan to comply with swimming pool safety legislation instead of providing a swimming pool barrier complying with the pool safety standard. A pool safety management plan must include details of the safety measures the owner intends to implement under the plan to appropriately provide for the safety of young children in and around the pool.
A pool safety management plan is not an exemption from pool safety laws. Instead, it provides that the owner of a pool associated with a class 3 building may use approved alternative measures in order to comply with pool safety legislation.
Annual Application
An approved pool safety management plan is effective for one year after the day it is approved, unless cancelled sooner. The annual application is intended to ensure that the integrity of a pool safety management plan is maintained over time as circumstances change, for example, changes in key pool safety personnel.
Pool owners who have an approved pool safety management plan should consider this timeframe and the time it may take to approve a pool safety management plan when they make subsequent applications to the department. Under pool safety legislation, the pool owner must have an approved pool safety management plan in effect for the pool at all times or have a barrier complying with the pool safety standard.
If there is no pool safety management plan and no pool safety certificate is in effect for a pool associated with a class 3 building, the pool owner will be in breach of pool safety legislation under the BA and may be liable for penalties.
Onsite inspections are proposed to be scheduled at least once every five years. However, where a substantial change to a previous pool safety management plan has been made, an inspection may be required with the relevant application. This does not prevent the QBCC or local governments from conducting audits from time to time.
