TL;DR — Haven Compliance provides window safety inspections across Chatswood — one of the North Shore‘s densest residential precincts, from the towers along Pacific Highway and Victoria Avenue to the mid-rise developments between the station and the Zenith. Every openable window is tested against section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015: the 125mm opening limit and the 250 newton force requirement, verified per AS 5203:2016. Chatswood’s family-heavy demographics make this the least theoretical compliance duty a committee carries. Fixed per-unit pricing, photographic reports, one provider for the whole cycle. Call +61 2 8000 0287.
Haven Compliance — a window safety specialist serving the strata buildings that have made Chatswood one of the densest residential precincts on the North Shore. The towers along Pacific Highway and Victoria Avenue, the high-rises above Chatswood Chase, and the mid-rise developments filling the streets between the train station and the Zenith towers hold thousands of strata lots — and every openable window in them is subject to the same NSW compliance obligation.
What sharpens the duty in Chatswood specifically is who lives behind those windows. The suburb’s demographics skew strongly toward families with young children — the exact population window safety law exists to protect. In a suburb where a large share of apartments house toddlers, window safety compliance is not a paperwork exercise that happens to involve hardware; it is child protection that happens to generate paperwork.
We treat it in that order.
High-density, family-heavy suburbs are where the duty does its real work. The legal foundation is section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 — in force across NSW residential strata since 13 March 2018 — which obliges the owners corporation to see that complying safety devices protect every qualifying window: openable, with the internal floor two metres or more above the external ground, and the opening commencing below 1.7 metres from the floor.
A window passes when its device holds the opening to 125mm or less — or a robust screen covers it — and the hardware withstands 250 newtons, per AS 5203:2016. Adult-releasable is fine; must re-engage. Flyscreen is never fine. And the owners corporation’s responsibility does not stop at the lot boundary: private windows are covered exactly as common ones. Two persistent errors — both previously circulated about Chatswood — need naming.
Annual inspections are best practice, not law: no statute sets an inspection interval, and we will never claim one does. The maximum fine is $550 for a non-compliant owners corporation — modest by design — because the true deterrent is what a preventable fall costs in civil liability, insurance position and conscience. Section 180 obliges the scheme to hold its records for 7 years.
Chatswood’s strata stock is newer than most of Sydney’s — a high concentration of post-2000 high-density development — which produces a specific compliance illusion: buildings that look compliant because devices were installed at construction. The hardware is present, the committee assumes the box is ticked, and nobody has force-tested a restrictor since the builder handed over. A decade of window cleans, tenant turnover and daily use later, presence and function have quietly parted company.
The older layer — walk-ups and mid-rise blocks from the decades before the tower boom, scattered through the streets off Victoria Avenue and toward Artarmon — has the more familiar profile: devices retrofitted inconsistently over the years or never fitted at all, with compliance records to match. And because Chatswood’s apartments trade and re-let constantly in a high-demand market, the renovation-and-changeover churn that removes devices runs faster here than in quieter suburbs.
The building stock is good; the assumption that good stock equals compliant stock is the thing we test.
Construction-installed restrictors that no longer hold force — the signature failure of newer stock: the device is there, the fixings have worked loose, and 250 newtons defeats it. Devices disengaged by residents for ventilation — common in family buildings, ironically, where windows are opened constantly — and never re-engaged. Post-renovation gaps, where a window replacement or repaint came with the restrictor off and nobody’s job was putting it back.
Furniture-adjacent windows, which are not a hardware failure but appear in our reports anyway: a compliant window with a cot or bed directly beneath it deserves a note to the resident, and gets one. The lesson repeats across every dense, newer suburb we serve: the danger is not the missing device you can see — it is the fitted device that fails.
Planned with the strata manager, invisible to almost everyone else. We settle the access process and entry notices in advance, supply the resident notice template — which matters in a family suburb, where “child safety check” opens doors that “compliance inspection” does not — and sequence the visit floor by floor or block by block. Residents do not need to be home. Every qualifying window is physically tested for the 125mm restriction and the 250 newton hold, photographed, and logged to the unit.
Mid-rise buildings typically complete in a morning; towers are scheduled by floor. The full on-the-day detail is in our inspection process guide. You receive the photographic report, the unit-by-unit register for the scheme’s section 180 records, your digital compliance certificate and any per-window remediation quote the same day as the inspection. Approved remediation is installed with REMSAFE hardware, force-tested, and re-verified into the register — one closed loop, documented end to end.
Newer buildings often need less remediation but the same testing rigour — pricing reflects window count, not building age. The quote is built per unit and frozen before we book — unit count, access logistics and window volume are its only inputs. No hourly rates; no surprise lines. The published structure needs one sentence: $250 + GST for a single property, $490 + GST for buildings of 2 to 10 units, fixed quotes on request from 11 units up — same-day digital certificate included at every tier.
Failed window safety devices become an itemised per-window REMSAFE quote — child safety window locks and restrictors alike — with pre-authorised replacements fitted during the visit itself. Committees that want the number lower have two honest levers: combine the inspection and remediation into one project instead of two engagements, and join a grouped run with neighbouring buildings — coordination overhead is the silent cost in compliance, and both moves cut it.
The fee is complete by design — inspection, photographic report, register and same-day certificate, with hardware call-outs included rather than invoiced. Chatswood committees do the maths best end-to-end: certified compliance, fully documented, in one engagement, tends to cost less than any cheaper-looking journey there.
Strata managers with North Shore portfolios — Chatswood buildings usually sit in portfolios spanning Willoughby, Artarmon, St Leonards and Crows Nest, and we schedule across the run in one conversation, with per-building registers throughout. Owners corporations and committees, from tower committees to smaller self-managed schemes. Property managers and landlords in Chatswood’s substantial rental market, booking unit-level checks and end-of-lease window safety audits.
Parents and owner-occupiers, who in this suburb more than most contact us directly to make their own apartment’s windows child-safe — law or no law. Neighbouring location pages cover North Sydney, Crows Nest, St Leonards and the wider North Shore; portfolio scheduling crosses all of them.
Because a checklist inspection records that a device exists, and existence is not the legal test. Our technicians do window safety exclusively: every device force-tested at the window, every result photographed, every register built to be read closely — by a committee, an insurer, or a lawyer with hindsight. One provider carries the whole chain from finding to fixing to re-verifying, at fixed prices agreed before work. Two honesty notes we publish everywhere.
NSW has no official certification scheme for window safety inspectors — authority in this industry is method and evidence, nothing else. And no law mandates annual inspections — a claim still common in compliance marketing. The duty is continuous; the annual cycle is simply the sane way to meet it.
As a five-minute standing item with three attachments — not a crisis discussion every few years. The pattern that works: the committee tables the current unit-by-unit register, notes the date of the last inspection, and passes a short resolution committing to the next cycle. Where remediation is outstanding, the fixed per-window quote is attached so the decision and the budget arrive together. Five minutes, minuted, done — and the scheme’s records now show a committee that manages the duty rather than rediscovering it.
A workable motion your secretary can adapt: “That the owners corporation notes the window safety register dated [date], confirms the building was last inspected on [date], approves the attached remediation quote [if any], and resolves to schedule the next reinspection in [month/year].” For Chatswood committees — often managing newer buildings where the temptation is to assume construction hardware is forever — the annual minute is also the cheapest insurance available: it converts “we assumed it was fine” into “we verified it annually,” which are very different sentences after an incident.
We supply the register and a one-page committee brief with every cycle, formatted to drop straight into the meeting pack.
By treating the first inspection as the start of a rhythm, not a transaction. Buildings on our annual reinspection and maintenance program get every device retested each cycle, maintenance-grade fixes completed in-visit, the register rolled forward, and a short committee summary of what changed. Our reminder system tracks the anniversary and contacts the manager ahead of time — the compliance date never depends on human memory.
For a family-dense suburb, the cycle has one extra virtue: it catches the resident-disengaged restrictor — the most human failure mode there is — within a year instead of within a childhood. That, more than any certificate, is the point of the entire exercise.
Yes. Construction-installed devices fail the force test after years of use more often than committees expect. Newer buildings need their hardware verified, not assumed — presence and function are different findings.
Yes. Section 118 covers lot windows as well as common property, and the owners corporation carries the duty across the whole building. Inspections are arranged through the scheme’s standard entry-notice process.
Keep beds, cots and climbable furniture away from windows, never rely on flyscreens, and re-engage restrictors after full-opening use. Devices plus habits is what keeps children safe — our inspections note furniture-adjacent windows for exactly this reason.
No — no NSW statute sets an inspection interval, despite what some providers claim. The obligation is a continuously compliant building; annual reinspection is the best-practice cycle that delivers it at lowest cost and risk.
Most mid-rise buildings are inspected in a single visit, with the digital certificate and photographic report delivered the same day. Worn or damaged devices are replaced on the spot where the committee has pre-authorised it; larger remediation is quoted fixed per window and scheduled promptly.
Not sure which service tier fits your building? Our compliance specialists can help you understand your requirements and choose the right option.
