Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Building designers: public liability requirements in New South Wales

Cover for legal liability to third parties for personal injury or property damage arising from business activities.

Data as at

Verified for New South Wales

  • Licence liability condition: Yes — professional indemnity, and the striking part is that no amount is prescribed. Section 11 of the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 bars a registered design practitioner from providing a design compliance declaration, doing related building work, or holding out as adequately insured, unless adequately insured. The Regulation then requires the policy to extend the indemnity to all liability incurred at any time since the practitioner first became registered — full retroactivity to first registration. On the amount, the Regulation says the policy must, in the practitioner's own reasonable opinion, provide an adequate level of indemnity, and lists the factors that opinion must weigh: the nature and risks of the work typically carried out, its volume, how long the practitioner has been registered, a reasonable estimate of claims that could be brought, the practitioner's financial capacity, and the policy's own limits and exclusions. The Act contains a power to prescribe an amount; it has not been used. NSW · effective 2026-08-25 New South Wales Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licence evidence required: Three obligations, and the middle one catches people out. It is a condition of registration to give the Secretary, in the time specified, whatever information the Secretary requires to be satisfied the practitioner is adequately insured. It is also a condition to keep written records of how the practitioner determined the policy provides an adequate level of indemnity, keep them for at least five years, and produce copies on written request — so the reasoning behind the judgement has to be documented, not just the policy. And ceasing to be covered is a notifiable event within seven days. The Secretary can compel insurers to disclose policy information about registered practitioners. No automatic suspension provision was located; lapse is a notifiable event and a disciplinary ground. NSW · effective 2026-08-25 New South Wales Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: Building design is an express registered class in New South Wales — three of them, in fact. The Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021 prescribes design practitioner classes including building design, building design (low rise) and building design (medium rise), alongside separate architectural, facade, fire safety engineering and fire systems classes. Registration is with the Secretary of the Department of Customer Service through Building Commission NSW. The scope has hard edges: a building design practitioner may prepare or vary a regulated design for building work other than a class 2 building and make a design compliance declaration for it, but is not authorised where the work would constitute an architectural service under the Architects Act 2003, or professional engineering work, or falls to one of the fire systems classes. NSW · effective 2026-08-25 NSW Government · 2026-08-25

What contracts commonly ask for

Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.

What this cover costs

This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.

Sources