The Standards and Regulations You Have to Comply with when Constructing an Aged Care Facility

I found the regulations kafkaesque. Wanting to spare you all the trouble so you know exactly what you need to comply with, in order to build a facility, here is a short precis of the regulations you need to cover:

1. Aged Care Design Principles.

• Source: Final report on the development of the draft National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines. This become applicable on 1^st July 2024. These standards go down to the detail of internal fittings.

2. The National Construction Code: NCC
3. Accessibility Standards: Disability (Access to Premises – Buildings) Standards 2010. The NCC basically cut and pastes it.
4. Presumably even though the government’s own discussion paper omit it, we would also have to comply with AS1428 accessibility requirements.
5. Aged Care Quality Standards – which for the purposes of designing and constructing require:
   1. the environment is welcoming and easy to understand
   2. the environment is safe, clean, well maintained and enables senior Australians to move freely, both indoors and outdoors, and
   3. furniture, fittings and equipment are safe, clean and well maintained.

NCC Classes:

The NCC groups buildings by their function and use. These groups are assigned a classification which is then how buildings are referred to throughout the NCC. Some relevant classes for aged care include:

• Class 9c – aged care building or a residential care building (institutional)
• Class 3, 9a – residential aged care building and residential care building
• Class 1a and 2 – private residencies (arrangements of care outside the scope of NCC)
• Class 1b and 3 – boarding house providing accommodation for the aged. Class 1b buildings are smaller and don’t require sprinkler protection (more of a residential set-up vs institutional).

Source Copied from the: New Residential Aged Care Accommodation Framework Overview discussion paper

Apparently you are not required to follow the Livable Housing Design Guidelines (LHDG) because they were not developed with residential aged care in mind (see the New Residential Aged Care Accommodation Framework Design and Innovation discussion paper) – but they may be appropriate for aged case.