Class 3 Building Regulations

Class 3 is shared and transient residential. Boarding houses, guest houses, hostels, backpackers, workers' accommodation, and the residential parts of hotels, motels and schools. If unrelated people live under one roof, and it is not a Class 1 house or a Class 2 apartment building, it is usually Class 3.

The part that catches developers out: the Design and Building Practitioners regime is not apartments only. Class 2, Class 3 and Class 9c are together the regulated buildings under the scheme, so a boarding house carries the same obligations as an apartment building.

What that means for a boarding house project

• Registered practitioners throughout. Every regulated design must be prepared and declared by a registered design practitioner, and the builder must be registered and appoint a qualified practitioner.
• Designs lodged before the work. Regulated designs go on the NSW Planning Portal before the building work they relate to commences, and variations designed later must be lodged before that varied work is built. The Regulated Design Guidance Material lists which drawings are regulated and which consultant is responsible for each.
• The expected completion notice. At least 6 and no more than 12 months before you apply for the occupation certificate. It is commonly misremembered as a rule about your designs. It is not, and the full explanation is on the Class 2 page, because the rule is identical across all three classes.
• Facade engineer sign off is the critical path. They need window and door shop drawings before they will declare, so the window supplier has to be appointed much earlier than most programmes assume.
• Waterproofing is regulated design work, on new builds and on repairs alike. The Commissioner's waterproofing principles are the best guide to designing it properly.

The design problem underneath the compliance

Boarding houses live or die on the balance between density, compliance and actually being somewhere a person would want to live. Getting real daylight, cross ventilation, storage and acoustic separation into a tight footprint is the design work, and it is the difference between a project that leases well and one that fights its own market for a decade.

Good Architect is registered for Class 2, Class 3 and Class 9c work, and we design shared living projects on the Central Coast under this scheme.