The BPB wants to survey "council building certification officers"
The Building Professionals Board has now released for public exhibition their proposals for the accreditation of council building certifiers. That's you, although we know that no one is called a building certifier or a building certification officer in local government. That's just part of the contempt that the BPB displays for the 100 years of successful building regulation by local government.
First things first – don’t respond to the survey
There is some urgency in our request to you to ignore entirely any attempt by the BPB to survey council employees about their accreditation proposals. It is not to anyone's advantage to dignify this presumptuous survey with a response.
The BPB has placed on exhibition proposed changes to the Building Professionals Regulation 2007 and the accreditation scheme made under the Building Professionals Act 2005. They provide detail on how the BPB wants to accredit council staff and they invite comments on the proposals by 27 February 2009.
Why would they bother? The proposed Survey makes it abundantly clear that they want new provisions to "commence in early 2009". We were able to expose as a sham the Department of Planning’s "consultation process" that accompanied their discussion paper "Improving the NSW planning system" in November 2007. Our FOI application was rejected by the Minister for Planning because the documents we were seeking indicated that Cabinet had resolved what would happen about amending the EP&A Act before it went to public consultation.
The BPB wants you to respond to their survey so they can plan your accreditation. We have historically opposed accreditation of council staff for a variety of good reasons which are provided later in the bulletin.
It is clear from the BPB's own documentation that they have a fantasy about their role and how the accreditation system will affect building control provided by councils.
They want to know four things:
1 How many council officers will be accredited
This is presumptuous at best. Given that there is a document up for public consultation and that there will be overwhelming opposition to the concept of accrediting council employees from the industry itself, and the critical questions about the flaws and inconsistencies in the system revealed in 2004 are still unanswered, this should be left to one side. We did calculate that there could be up to 800 council employees accredited when this issue first arose in 2004.
The real reason the BPB wants to know how many people are going to be accredited is because they want to base their budget on this anticipated revenue stream.
2 The categories of accreditation sought "to determine if council areas will be adequately serviced"
This is an ambitious goal for the BPB - now they want to determine whether there are enough "certifiers" across the State to make a judgement about whether councils will be properly staffed.
3 Qualifications of council officers "to assist experienced persons to be accredited where they do not have a relevant qualification"
Be warned. If you have a qualification that the BPB deems to be not sufficient, maybe a Diploma or Associate Diploma and decades of experience, what will happen to you? The BPB hasn't been very benign in its approach to local government offices in the past, we should expect the worst.
4 “The experience of officers carrying out certification work to determine the need for accreditation pathways be developed (sic) to enable more practitioners into the certification industry".
How preposterous is this? Now the industry is not local government, decades of history, established career paths and probably involving moves from one council to another, are to be disregarded because someone has a fantasy that the real industry in which you work is the "certification industry".
Information sessions have been organised by the BPB, the first of which was held on Thursday in Dubbo and the last of which will be held in Bathurst and Griffith on 8 December. Curiously, the BPB has arranged separate sessions for people like you who they would like to accredit and for management and HR. Why there would need to be two sessions is curious, do they have a view already about how councils should train, insure and pay for the accreditation of staff?
If they do, they had this view without agreement with the LGSA or us - and as this initiative involves significant employment-related questions, it should not proceed without agreement between the employer organisation party to the Local Government (State) Award (and the other industrial instruments in the handful of councils not covered by that Award) and depa as the union representing the employees affected. The USU and LGEA may have an interest here as well.
We urge you to reject the BPB survey to allow local government and local government employees to have proper input in response to the public exhibition.
ThroughoutDecember 2005 depa encouraged members to ban the provision of information to the BPB when the BPB revealed its intention to send its own flunkies on inspections with local government employees. At the time, this was opposed by both the LGSA and bepa and negotiations with the BPB broke down.
The ban implemented then was extremely effective and this ban needs to be equally so.
Why would you accredit council officers? (back)
The Campbell Inquiry was set up in 2003 as a response by the Government to significant pressure, particularly from Independents in the Upper House, to review the private certification system. In passing, the Inquiry recommended that there needed to be a "level playing field" for private certifiers and for council employees and this would involve accreditation of both.
In July 2004 DIPNA released a discussion paper which was uniformly lambasted by all local government organisations - and particularly by depa and the Local Government Association and Shires Association. The LGSA invited the depa Secretary to attend both the Shires Association Executive, which carried a resolution of opposition and the Association Executive meeting - which carried the same resolution but a further consideration about the corruptibility of the private certification system.
The LGSA and DIPNA convened a forum in Sydney on 30 August. As an organiser, the LGSA arranged the depa Secretary to open the Forum (much to the chagrin of the DIPNA functionaries) and the well-attended crowd of councillors and council staff was uniformly hostile to DIPNA’s proposals.
Just as the BPB contemptuously ignores local government’s proud history and talks about "the accreditation industry", the DIPNA presentation focused on the "history of certification", which they think began in 1998 - forgetting entirely the 90 or so years of building control carried out by councils without State Government bodies making sure the councils get their staffing needs right or whatever it is the BPB thinks it's doing.
The consultation period which accompanied the July 2004 discussion paper saw BPB CEO-in-waiting Neil Cocks traipsing around the State and telling everyone that the BPB needed to accredit council officers to make itself financially viable.
Why do we oppose accreditation of council staff? (back)
Later in this Bulletin is a link to our August 2004 submission. It stands the test of time and can be conveniently summarised by saying these are the five good reasons why accrediting council certifiers would be a waste of time and money:
- There is sufficient supervision and control already.
- No one needs parallel accountability.
- The costs are prohibitive.
- It would distract the BPB from the real job.
- A central and external point of complaint is incompatible with a Council's role in managing their staff.
We also didn't like:
- The fantasy that there can ever be a "level playing field".
- The idea that "certification" began as a process in 1998. Councils have been doing it for 100 years.
- The expression “council certifier". No-one but DIPNA and the private certifier lobby use this expression. It is foreign to councils and does not describe anyone's job.
DIPNR's farcical response - sets up (non) Working Group (back)
Stung by the hostility in 2004, DIPNR established the Working Group on Council Accreditation: comprised of a number of Local Government bodies including depa, the Local Government Association and Shires Association, the Local Government Engineers Association - as well as the AIBS as a representative of the dark side.
While the Working Group met on a number of occasions, its meetings never proceeded further than disagreements about the way BPB officers had recorded proceedings at the previous meeting - preparing minutes that falsified proceedings by trying to record that there was uniformity and agreement to the BPB proposals when there was anything but that.
The Working Group collapsed after a number of fruitless meetings without any agreement.
Some useful links (back)
1. Sydney Morning Herald report on 6 December 2005 on earlier depa ban on providing information to BPB
Some unanswered questions about accrediting council staff (back)
1 Why not accredit councils and let them manage the job as they do now with auditing by the BPB?
The BPB has now established an accreditation process for corporate bodies and could equally establish a process of accrediting councils and leave to councils the discretion to allocate work consistent with qualifications and experience.
- Why has the BPB rejected this model?
- If it can be done with private certifiers, why can't it be done with councils?
- Doesn't this model avoid all the complications arising from the questions about parallel accountability, individual liability, cost, time off work etc, which follow below?
2 How will parallel accountability work ?
We know that councils can deal with performance issues for staff very promptly. We know that the BPB can't properly handle discipline and performance issues.
- How would this be managed?
- What happens when a council resolves an issue with their employee by providing training or some sort of disciplinary action and then, some lazy 12 or 18 months later, the BPB starts fiddling with it?
- What part of double jeopardy doesn’t the BPB get?
3 What individual liability will exist for accredited council staff?
We have already had reports from members who attended yesterday's BPB briefing session at Warringah. Bright-eyed young lawyers who wouldn't know a piece of four by two if they were hit by it, put the frighteners on council staff with a focus on their individual liability and the possibility that individual employees may be sued arising from these new accreditation proposals.
- Is the BPB intent on establishing a liability for individual employees?
- Would there be an individual liability for Council staff?
- Is this liability insurable?
- Is it insurable by the employee or by the Council?
- Is the cost of the insurance met by the employee or the Council?
- Does the BPB have a view about how accreditation will affect salary levels for council staff?
- Does the BPB have a view about how much more money employees should receive from the council to cover costs and increased accountability?
- What part of double jeopardy doesn't the BPB get?
4 What will accreditation cost?
We already know, because Neil Cocks has been telling everyone this since 2004, that the BPB needs to be bankrolled by accreditation fees from council employees.
- How much will accreditation cost?
- Who or what will determine the fee and how that fee is increased over time?
- Will the legislation require that it be paid by the employee or by the Council?
- Will the BPB require that even if the employee needs to pay the accreditation fee, that it be reimbursed by the Council?
- Does the BPB understand that 30% of councils are on "finance watch" by the Department of Local Government because they are close to trading insolvent and many other councils are marginal, even large ones?
- How does the BPB expect financially strapped councils will meet these costs when they struggle to offer market-based salaries?
5 How much time will be involved in the accreditation process?
We have all seen the grandiose schemes of the professional bodies like the AIBS and AIEH and PIA which, to achieve suitable CPD points, require astonishing amounts of training external to the organisation and increasing levels of education. And which assume employees focus solely on building, environmental/public health or planning when many employees across the State (particularly west of the Great Dividing Range) do all three.
- How many hours per week or per year are expected to achieve accreditation?
- How many hours per week or per year are expected to continue accreditation at the level established in the original accreditation?
- How many hours per week or per year are expected to achieve a higher level of accreditation?
- Will the BPB require that all this time involved in accreditation is paid for by Councils?
- How much training would be carried out external to the councils and may require travel and overnight accommodation?
- Will the BPB require that all this time and expense be paid for by councils?
- Who will do the work at councils while everyone is off being trained and/or accredited?
6 How does a Council apply for exemption?
There is reference to councils being able to apply for an exemption from this regime. Questions about how this would operate could not be answered earlier in the year when the idea was first mooted.
- How does a Council apply for exemption?
- Who or what considers an application for exemption?
- What are the criteria for providing an exemption?
- Is there an appeal mechanism if the Council wants to contest the decision to not apply the exemption?
7 Why is the BPB running separate sessions for management and HR and not consulting with depa?
Clearly the critical issues about this issue relate to employment. Individual liability, costs to be incurred either by the employee or by their employing council, implications for employment where a council may deal with a complaint differently to a subsequent process by the BPB are all industrial issues.
- When will the BPB consult with the LGSA and depa about employment issues?
- What will the BPB do if employees choose not to apply for accreditation because of inadequate protection against risks of individual liability?
- What will the BPB do if councils choose not to have their employees accredited?
- What if the industry bans the accreditation process and doesn't co-operate?
- How will the BPB ensure that building control services are provided in all local government areas if employees are not accredited and/or councils don't get exemptions?
- What happens to employees currently doing "certifying" if they don't get accreditation?
- Will the BPB fund redundancy settlements for employees who don't apply for or are ineligible for accreditation under the new regime?
Please attend the BPB State-wide workshops (back)
Attend the BPB blitzkrieg across the State. This is where the workshops will be held:
And why not wear one of our campaign T-shirts? (back)
Just as our 1996 "I have an offer you can't refuse" and Dodgy Brothers posters are valuable political memorabilia, we expect our 2008 "Neil Cocks needs you" T-shirts will be just as popular. Leaving our office in the mail today and Monday, this beautifully designed T-shirt will become a family heirloom and is a very suitable item to be worn when you meet Neil and his staff traipsing around the State.
Featuring the well-received graphic from our November Bulletin of digital mischief with the iconic Lord Kitchener as the face of World War 1 recruitment, these T-shirts are quality cotton, black, XL and short-sleeved for summer. We are sending one to each delegate and to others we expect will be supporters in this campaign.
You will never know when you will see someone wearing one. We will even send one to Planning Minister Kristina Keneally.
They are also for sale for $20. Ring Jody and she'll send you one.
Ian Robertson
Secretary
