Key Takeaways
- Regulated design under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (DBP Act) currently applies to Class 2 buildings, certain Class 3 buildings and Class 9c buildings, including mixed-use buildings with one of those parts. A registered design practitioner must prepare the regulated design and lodge a design compliance declaration on the NSW Planning Portal before the related building work starts.
- NSW building law is mid-transition. The building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026 received assent in August 2026 and will eventually replace the DBP Act, renaming construction certificates as building approvals and occupation certificates as completion approvals. It has no fixed start date, and the current DBP Act keeps applying until the new Act's regulations are made.
- Two pathways change how fast a larger housing project can move through planning: the Housing Delivery Authority (HDA), which can send an eligible project straight to the state government as State Significant Development, and State Significant Development (SSD) more broadly, which has its own thresholds, environmental impact statement and consultation requirements.
- Neither pathway removes the regulated design obligation. A Class 2 project fast-tracked through the HDA still needs its registered design practitioner for declarations before a construction certificate, or its successor building approval, can be issued.
Few areas of NSW building regulation have moved as fast, or matter as much to a project's cost and timeline, as regulated design. Since the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 was introduced in the wake of the Shergold-Weir building confidence review, it has reshaped who is legally accountable for a design and how that accountability is proven, and 2026 has brought the next significant shift: a new Building Act working its way toward commencement, alongside housing pathways designed to get larger residential projects through planning faster than ever before.
This article sets out what regulated design currently means in NSW, what changes once the Building Act 2026 takes effect, and how the Housing Delivery Authority and State Significant Development pathways interact with those design obligations. It is written for developers, operators, and project teams who need to understand not just the rules as they stand today, but the direction they are heading.
What Is a "Regulated Design" Under the DBP Act 2020?
The DBP Act introduced a statutory duty of care that applies broadly to anyone carrying out construction work in NSW, including design work, and it cannot be contracted out of. Sitting alongside that duty is a narrower, more specific regime: certain designs for certain classes of building must be prepared by a registered design practitioner and formally declared compliant before building work can proceed.
A regulated design is, in plain terms, the design for a building element (such as a fire safety system, waterproofing or a structural component) or the design of a performance solution used to satisfy the National Construction Code by an alternative means rather than a deemed-to-satisfy pathway. Where a design falls into either category for a regulated building, the practitioner who prepared it must hold the relevant design registration and must declare, on the public record, that the design complies.
Which Buildings Are Currently Covered
The regulated classes under the DBP Act are currently Class 2 (buildings containing two or more sole-occupancy units, the standard apartment building classification), certain Class 3 buildings, and Class 9c buildings, along with mixed-use buildings that contain one of those classes as a component.
It is worth being precise about what this does and doesn't catch. A residential flat building is squarely a Class 2 building and squarely within scope. A childcare Centre, by contrast, is typically a Class 9b assembly building, which is not currently one of the regulated classes under the DBP Act, even though it carries its own detailed set of National Construction Code, accessibility and National Quality Framework obligations that we've covered elsewhere.
The same goes for most commercial work in Classes 5 to 8. Knowing which regime applies to a given project, rather than assuming DBP-style obligations to apply everywhere, is the first and most practical question to get right.
The Design Compliance Declaration Process
For a regulated building, the registered design practitioner prepares the regulated design and makes a design compliance declaration confirming it complies with the National Construction Code. That declaration is lodged on the NSW Planning Portal, and the building practitioner responsible for the work must have it in hand before that element of construction begins.
Where a variation during construction changes to a building element or a performance solution, a new or updated regulated design and a fresh declaration are required. A variation that doesn't touch either of those doesn't need a design practitioner to sign-off, though the building practitioner still must record it. On larger projects with multiple design practitioners, a principal design practitioner may be appointed to complete an overarching principal compliance declaration.
The obligation doesn't end at the construction certificate stage. Before an occupation certificate can be applied for, as-built regulated designs and declarations must be lodged, confirming what was built against matches, or has been properly varied from; what was declared compliant at the start. Shoring, underpinning and anchoring designs are captured by the same regime, including where a variation to that work arises after it has already started.
The Statutory Duty of Care
Separate from, but layered over, the regulated design regime is the DBP Act's statutory duty of care. It is owed to owner's corporations and subsequent owners for economic loss caused by defects arising from construction work, it applies retrospectively to a degree the original 2020 reforms made clear, and critically, it is non-delegable and cannot be contracted away in a consultancy agreement or a building contract. It extends beyond design practitioners themselves to anyone who prepares, coordinates or supervises design documents for building work, which is a wider net than the registration regime alone.
What's Changing: The Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Act 2026
NSW Parliament passed the building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026, and it received assent in August 2026. Once it is fully in force, it will repeal the DBP Act, the Building and Development Certifiers Act 2018 and their regulations, folding building approvals and practitioner regulation into a single framework.
The headline changes are largely structural rather than a rollback of obligations. Construction certificates become building approvals, and occupation certificates become completion of approvals, with a completion of approval able to cover part of a building where work is staged. Certifiers are reframed as approval authorities, a category that includes both councils and suitably registered individuals, moving away from the purely certifier-centric model.
The conflict-of-interest regime is tightened considerably, moving from a subjective test to clear objective factors, with maximum penalties for serious breaches rising from $33,000 to $1.1 million and an automatic 120-day registration suspension following a conviction. Prefabricated building work gains formal recognition, with its own manufacturer documentation obligations, and amendments to the Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 foreshadow a new apartment dispute-resolution scheme, with the detail to be set by regulation.
Regulated design survives the transition in substance. A building approval application involving a building element in a prescribed class of building will still need the regulated design and a declaration from a registration holder. The important qualifier is that the prescribed class is defined by regulations that haven't been made yet, so this part of the new Act isn't operative, and in the meantime the current DBP Act keeps applying exactly as it does today.
There is no fixed commencement date for most of the Act. Only two Schedule 3 items, relating to Crown prefabricated building work, commenced on assent; everything else starts on a day set by proclamation once the supporting regulations are drafted, with industry consultation expected to run through 2026 and into 2027.
The sensible reading, and the one we're working to, is that this is a transition rather than a deregulation, and that a project moving through design, documentation or construction now should keep meeting its current DBP Act obligations while its design and project team keep a watching brief on the regulations as they're released.
The Other Side of the Coin: Faster Pathways for Housing
The Housing Delivery Authority (HDA)
While the Building Act reforms work through practitioner regulation, a separate and faster-moving set of reforms has targeted the planning side: how quickly a larger housing project can get from concept to construction. The Housing Delivery Authority was established in December 2024 by ministerial order, in support of the state's commitment under the National Housing Accord, and was written into the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 through amendments that took effect in November 2025.
The HDA pathway lets an eligible housing project be declared State Significant Development, which moves its assessment from the local council to the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, with the Planning Minister retaining final approval authority on the advice of the Authority. The government's stated aim is to cut roughly a year from the usual time between a development proposal and the start of construction, and the Authority's own review after its first twelve months reported a substantially expanded pipeline of homes moving through the pathway.
Eligibility is reasonably specific. The residential component has to be multi dwelling housing, a residential flat building, seniors housing, shop-top housing, or qualifying co-living or student housing; standalone subdivision doesn't qualify on its own, though it can be included alongside high-yield housing. In Greater Sydney, and in the Newcastle and Wollongong local government areas, the residential component generally needs an estimated development cost of around $60 million or more and around 100 or more dwellings; elsewhere in NSW, the threshold drops to roughly $30 million and 40 dwellings.
On top of the cost and dwelling tests, the site has to meet a location test (an accessible area under the Housing SEPP in metro and key regional areas, or within 800 metres of appropriately zoned land elsewhere), avoid a list of excluded zones and environmentally or hazard-constrained land, demonstrate secure land tenure, and commit to a measurable affordable housing contribution, among a further set of timing and process conditions.
State Significant Development (SSD) and the SSDA More Broadly
An SSDA, a State Significant Development Application, is the formal application lodged under the SSD pathway in the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, and it is assessed by the state rather than by council regardless of which route brought the project into that pathway. The HDA is one route into SSD status, but not the only one. The in-fill affordable housing SSD pathway under the Housing SEPP, for example, carries its own threshold, broadly around $75 million estimated development cost in Greater Sydney and $30 million in regional NSW, and its own eligibility conditions distinct from the HDA criteria.
Whichever route a project takes into SSD, the assessment generally requires a detailed Environmental Impact Statement, formal public exhibition and community consultation, and often a cost breakdown certified by a qualified quantity surveyor. Because these thresholds and criteria are actively being adjusted as the government tunes the schemes, the specific dollar figures and dwelling counts are worth confirming directly with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, or with a planning consultant, before they're relied on in a feasibility study.
Where Regulated Design Meets the Fast-Track
It's tempting to read a faster planning pathway as a lighter compliance load overall, but the two sit in different parts of the approval process and don't substitute for each other. A project declared State Significant Development through the HDA still has to satisfy the National Construction Code at construction certificate stage, and if it's a Class 2 residential flat building, which most HDA-eligible housing is, it still needs its regulated designs and design compliance declarations from a registered design practitioner before that certificate, or its building approval successor, can be issued. A faster planning approval buys back time at the front of the project; it doesn't remove a single step from the regulated design process that follows it.
That makes early coordination genuinely valuable rather than a nice-to-have. Bringing a registered design practitioner's input into the project from concept and SSDA stage, rather than leaving regulated design compliance to be resolved once planning consent is in hand, protects the very timeline advantage the HDA pathway is meant to deliver.
On a mixed-use HDA project, such as shop-top housing, the regulated design obligations attach specifically to the Class 2 residential component, even though the ground-floor retail or commercial component isn't independently regulated in the same way, which is a distinction worth building into the design program from day one. And with the Building Act 2026 still working through its regulations, a project moving through design and documentation now is best built to the current DBP Act requirements while keeping watch on which prescribed classes the new regulations eventually capture, so it isn't caught mid-project by a changed declaration requirement.
What This Means for Developers, Operators and Design Teams
Three things are worth confirming early on any project touched by this area of law. First, establish precisely which regime applies, whether the building class is a current DBP Act regulated class, and separately, whether the project might qualify for the HDA or another SSD pathway. Second, engage a registered design practitioner at concept stage rather than treating regulated design as a construction certificate formality to resolve later; the earlier it's coordinated with the architectural and structural design, the less it costs to get right. Third, if the Building Act 2026's commencement might fall within the project's program, build in a review point once the supporting regulations are released, rather than assuming the current DBP Act framework will be the one the project finishes under.
This is the area of practice ArtMade Architects has built real depth in over more than 25 years, with Construction Certificate services delivered under the DBP Act 2020, Class 2 residential regulated design work, and more than 50 matters before the NSW Land and Environment Court. If you're assessing a site for the HDA pathway, weighing up an SSD application, or simply need a registered design practitioner who understands where regulated design sits inside a fast-tracked approval, contact us today, and our team can help you work through what it means for your project.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly counts as a "regulated design" under the DBP Act 2020?
A regulated design is the design for a building element, such as fire safety systems, waterproofing or structural components, or the design of a performance solution used to meet the National Construction Code by alternative means. For a regulated class of building, that design must be prepared by a registered design practitioner and accompanied by a declaration that it complies, lodged on the NSW Planning Portal before the relevant work begins.
Which building classes currently need a registered design practitioner?
Currently Class 2 buildings, certain Class 3 buildings, Class 9c buildings, and mixed-use buildings containing one of those classes as a component. Most commercial building classes and Class 9b assembly buildings, such as childcare Centres, aren't currently captured by this specific regime, though they carry their own separate compliance obligations under the National Construction Code and other legislation.
Does the Housing Delivery Authority pathway remove the need for regulated design compliance?
The HDA changes who assess the planning application and how quickly, moving it to the state government rather than council. It has no effect on the separate requirement for a registered design practitioner to prepare regulated designs and lodge compliance declarations before a construction certificate is issued for a Class 2 component of the project.
When does the new Building Act 2026 actually take effect?
It received assent in August 2026, but most of its provisions commence on a day set by proclamation once supporting regulations are drafted, with industry consultation expected through 2026 and into 2027. Only a small number of provisions relating to Crown prefabricated building work commenced immediately. Until proclamation, the current DBP Act and its regulations continue to apply in full.
What's the difference between an SSDA through the HDA and another State Significant Development application?
Both result in a State Significant Development Application assessed by the state rather than by council, but they're reached through different eligibility tests. The HDA pathway has its own cost and dwelling thresholds and site criteria specific to housing; other SSD pathways, such as the in-fill affordable housing route under the Housing SEPP, carry separate thresholds and conditions. A project is assessed under whichever specific pathway it qualifies for, not a single generic SSD test.
What happens to a project already under the DBP Act once the Building Act 2026 commences?
The details will depend on the transitional provisions set out in the regulations, which haven't been released yet. The sensible approach for now is to keep meeting current DBP Act, certification and Planning Portal obligations in full, and to review any project likely to still be in design, construction or completion once commencement is proclaimed, so its approvals and declarations transition cleanly rather than being caught mid-process.
