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About certification

If you are planning to have building work done or are subdividing land, you may need to have certificates issued under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EP&A Act), the Strata Schemes (Freehold Development) Act 1973 or the Strata Schemes (Leasehold Development) Act 1986 from either your local council or an accredited certifier. You should check with your local council on what certificates are needed.

An overview of the development assessment and building and subdivision certification process is available here.

If your development needs to be certified, you need to choose whether to appoint the local council and/or an accredited certifier to do this work.

Accredited certifiers and local councils can:

• issue construction certificates, certifying (among other things) that the proposed work will comply with the Building Code of Australia (BCA);
• issue compliance certificates specifying approved conditions of consent have been satisfied or that work complies with the plans and specifications, or nominating the classification of a building under the BCA;
• issue complying development certificates, certifying that nominated development proposals comply with standards and criteria in the council's local environmental plans (LEP) and development control plans [where the council's LEP allows these certificates, they can be issued instead of obtaining a development consent from the council];
• issue strata certificates to enable registration of strata plans;
• conduct inspections of building works during their construction; and
• act as a principal certifying authority (PCA) responsible for, among other things, issuing occupation certificates specifying that buildings are safe to occupy and subdivision certificates specifying a subdivision can be registered (accredited certifiers may only issue subdivision certificates where the council's LEP permits their involvement).

You can appoint one certifying authority (an accredited certifier or your local council) to issue a construction certificate or a complying development certificate (CDC), and another certifying authority to act as the PCA.

Recent changes to the legislation also require you to make a separate appointment of PCA for each of the building work and the subdivision work (if any) you are to carry out. You can appoint the same PCA to do both tasks, but this needs to be made clear in the instrument appointing the PCA(s).

Note that both a construction certificate (or CDC) must be issued, and a PCA(s) appointed, before you can start work on your development. That is, you must have a construction certificate (or CDC) and a PCA appointed for subdivision work before you can start the subdivision work (if any). Similarily, you must have a construction certificate (or CDC) and a PCA appointed for building work before you can start the building work.

More information on choosing a certifying authority is available here.