Review of the categories and classes of building practitioner registration

The Building Commission and the Building Advisory Council, with the support of the Building Practitioners Board and Consumer Affairs Victoria, undertook a review of the underlying rationale and structure of the categories and classes of Building Practitioner Registration in Victoria.

The Building Commission (BC) and Building Advisory Council (BAC) wish to express their appreciation for all the submissions provided in relation to the review.

The Review process provided for valuable feedback and discussion on the practitioner registration system in Victoria, reflecting the diversity of interest and opinion both within the industry and in the community.   

The review was instigated because of the need to ensure that practitioner registration categories and classes are consistent with the long term needs of the building industry and reflect both (1) the requirement for practitioners to be appropriately skilled and (2) changes in the industry environment such as the recent developments in professional insurance. 

The Review participants were cognisant of the need for a building practitioner registration system to provide an effective way to correct an information imbalance experienced by consumers engaging the building industry.  The registration system has achieved this by providing confidence in the technical and other skills of the building practitioners they employ. A registration system should also provide an effective mechanism for protecting the consumer from those who are less skilled, and a disciplinary process for those not maintaining the requisite standard of conduct and competency.

The Review Findings supported a conclusion that the current registration system was working reasonably well and no major change was required at this time. While not the prime target of this review, no significant challenge was made to the concept of using the building permit process for ensuring that appropriately registered building practitioners were to be engaged in the work or the employment of mandatory insurance.

Closer to the focus of the review there were no strong arguments that there was benefit in Victoria adopting a significantly broader model of licensing or registration along the lines of NSW and Queensland. Also there was no criticism of the system focussing on registration of individual practitioners as its foundation.

The Review noted that the current regulatory environment requires higher levels of detailed scrutiny of any proposal to clearly demonstrate a net public benefit. A compelling level of data would be required to be collected, analysed and assessed for this benefit to be demonstrated.

In spite of a request for data in relation to the issues raised in the Discussion Paper no data was provided. As the resources and time required establishing useful data can be substantial a number of the areas of potential further consideration cannot be advanced at this time.

Nevertheless the Review Findings acknowledged that a number of issues raised in connection with the practitioner registration were worthy of consideration to a higher level of detail. This was to enable a view to be formed on whether a net public benefit that would outweigh the related cost would eventuate.

These issues were subjected to an initial cost/benefit assessment by PricewaterhouseCooper which identified that a number of issues would be unlikely to result in a net public benefit. Of those issues assessed as having some potential to result in a net public benefit the Building Commission will select those for detailed assessment during the current financial year.

If you have any queries on the above matter, please contact Marcelle West on telephone (03) 9285 6346.