High front guttering advisory committee report - NSW Fair Trading ...

Executive Summary
High fronted guttering systems have been in widespread use across Australia for almost 20 years.
Publicly stated concerns that this guttering does not comply with regulatory requirements prompted
the NSW Minister for Fair Trading to instruct NSW Fair Trading to establish a Review Advisory
Committee. The Committee was established in late 2010 and investigated whether or not high
fronted guttering installed in residential dwellings in New South Wales posed a systemic problem in
terms of compliance with regulations - specifically the Building Code of Australia (BCA).
A wide range of information was considered including documents and data collected by NSW Fair
Trading on consumer complaints and media, political and industry debate on high fronted guttering
issues and cases and files from NSW Fair Trading’s Operation Flow which checked compliance
relating to a number of display homes. In addition, the Committee received submissions from and
met with major manufacturers, relevant industry bodies and other interested parties. The
Committee wrote to all NSW Councils inviting them to make a presentation or submissions and
sought independent technical advice concerning an audit of Fair Trading’s Operation Flow. Further,
the Committee examined and assessed the consistency and adequacy of the regulatory framework
for the design and installation of high fronted guttering including the principal governing legislation
being the Home Building Act 1989; and related legislation and codes such as the Trade Practices Act
1974, licensing regulations, the BCA, Australian Standards, the Plumbing Code of Australia and the
NSW Plumbing and Drainage Code of Practice. This included meetings with relevant government
agencies and consideration of independent legal advice on the relative status of each of these
regulatory instruments in relation to high fronted guttering.
In undertaking the brief, the review focused primarily on compliance with BCA performance
requirements (in Section 2 of the BCA) – being the only mandatory requirements in the BCA. For
high fronted guttering the main requirement of interest is to keep water out of the building based
on a 100 year Annual Recurrent Interval (ARI) rain event. Such performance requirements aim to be
non-prescriptive – they tell designers and installers the outcome that must be achieved but avoid
prescribing how to actually achieve it. Information and advice on options for achieving the
performance requirements is reserved for the “Building Solutions” level of the BCA’s compliance
hierarchy. This level contains a variety of Deemed to Satisfy solutions where individuals can choose
which they prefer to use on a project by project basis. Such solutions include the BCA’s own
“Acceptable Construction Practice” (in section 3 of the BCA) and Australian Standards
AS3500.3/3500.5. These options provide a more prescriptive level of detail about how to construct
guttering in a way that can meet BCA performance requirements.
An overriding conclusion from the Committee is that there is no evidence of a systemic problem
concerning high fronted guttering based on BCA performance requirements. It is also the
Committee’s opinion that the BCA performance requirements have often been overlooked in the
debate about systemic problems with high fronted guttering - the focus having been on the
prescriptive requirements contained in Deemed to Satisfy solutions such as in AS3500.3/3500.5 and
the “Acceptable Construction Practice”. Though issues pertaining to the relationship and status of
these documents with BCA performance requirements need to be resolved and have been
addressed by the Committee, over emphasis on details within them has at times confused rather
than clarified the central issue concerning consideration of a systemic performance problem
regarding high fronted guttering.
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