Who signs your building's fire safety statement, and what it means

Most people on a strata committee have never seen an Annual Fire Safety Statement, and have no particular reason to. It is one of the routine annual obligations the scheme delegates and the manager handles.

This page explains who signs it, what the signature covers, and the one question worth asking — asked the right way, and for the right reason.

Who actually signs it

Not the fire contractor.

Under s88(1) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment (Development Certification and Fire Safety) Regulation 2021, the statement is issued by or on behalf of the owner — and FPA Australia's good practice guidance states that the accredited practitioner who assessed the measures must not make the owner's declaration.

For a strata scheme, the owner is the owners corporation. In a professionally managed scheme, the declaration is usually signed by the strata manager, under the delegation in the agency agreement.

So the sequence is: a fire contractor assesses the building, and then somebody else — usually your manager — signs the declaration saying the assessment was properly done.

What the declaration covers

The signatory is attesting that each essential fire safety measure specified in the statement has been assessed by an accredited practitioner as capable of performing to the standard the schedule requires, and that the building was inspected and found not to disclose grounds for a prosecution under Part 15.

The measures are the ones on the building's Fire Safety Schedule — the list issued with the building's approval, dealt with at s78 and s79. A small older walk-up might have three or four. A modern apartment tower might have twelve. A copy of the schedule must accompany the statement (s92(2)) and a copy of both must be prominently displayed in the building (s89(4)(b)), so you can usually find them without asking anyone.

The part that is not obvious

Accreditation to assess fire safety measures is granted measure by measure, not in general. There are 36 endorsement categories, and a practitioner may only assess the ones they hold.

This is not a loophole — it is how the scheme is designed, and FPA Australia's own guidance says a building may legitimately need more than one accredited practitioner. A specialist in sprinklers and hydrants is not necessarily accredited in smoke detection, and there is no reason they should be.

What follows from it is simply arithmetic. Across the 1,044 practitioners accredited in NSW, no single measure is held by more than 70% of them. For the engineered systems found in larger buildings, coverage runs between about a quarter and 43%.

So for a building with a long schedule, it is quite normal for one practitioner not to cover everything — and there is no step anywhere in the process that compares the two lists.

The one question worth asking

At your next committee meeting or AGM, when fire compliance comes up:

"Does the practitioner who signed our fire safety statement hold endorsements covering every measure on our Fire Safety Schedule — and can we have that noted in the records?"

That is the whole question. A few things about how to ask it.

Ask your manager, not around them. Your manager is the person who signs the declaration, which means they carry the exposure if it turns out the assessment did not cover everything. They have more reason to want this checked than you do.

It is not an accusation. Nothing about the question implies anyone has done anything wrong. It is a scope question with a factual answer, and the most likely answer is that the coverage is fine, or that one or two measures need a second assessor — which is ordinary and anticipated.

It is not a reason to change anything. Not your manager, not your fire contractor. Switching contractors has real costs: the incumbent holds your asset register, your defect history and your baseline test results, and a replacement starts without them. A scope gap is filled by adding a practitioner for the missing measures, not by replacing the one you have.

Ask for it to be recorded. The value of the check is the dated record of it. A note in the minutes that the question was asked and answered, with the date, is worth more to the scheme than the answer itself.

If you want to look yourself

Both registers are public and free.

• The Fire Safety Assessment Practitioners Register shows whether a practitioner is currently accredited and, when you expand their record, which measures they are endorsed for.
• The Notice of Decision Register records disciplinary decisions under the scheme.

The full method is here, including the thing most people get wrong: a practitioner who does not appear on the register might be a typo, might never have been accredited, might have lapsed, or might have been removed — the register returns the same empty result for all four, so absence on its own proves nothing.

If you do look and something seems off, take it to your manager first. They can get a definitive answer far faster than you can, and they have every incentive to.

What this page will not do

It will not put you in touch with a fire contractor, and there is no quote form on it.

That is deliberate. If your scheme is professionally managed, engaging fire contractors is your manager's job under the agency agreement, and a website that harvested that decision away from them would be doing your scheme no favours and your manager an active disservice. The useful thing we can offer a managed scheme is the information and the method — so that is all this page does.

Sources

• Environmental Planning and Assessment (Development Certification and Fire Safety) Regulation 2021 — s78, s79, s88, s89, s92, Part 15. Read on legislation.nsw.gov.au, 14 September 2026.
• FPA Australia, Good Practice Guide GPG-04, Fire Safety Statements — New South Wales, version 3, August 2024.
• FPA Australia, Fire Safety Assessment Practitioners Register — counts read 14 September 2026.
• NSW Fair Trading — guidance on appointing strata managers and other workers, and the delegation of owners corporation functions.

This page is general information about a public register and a published regulation, read on stated dates. It is not legal advice, not a certification, and not an assessment of any building or any person. No practitioner is named.

Written by Nigell Lee, Director, Reg Mon Aus Pty Ltd. Last verified 14 September 2026.