TL;DR — Haven Compliance provides window safety inspections across Sydney’s Inner West — one of the city’s most densely built corridors, from the Victorian terraces of Norton Street to the converted warehouses of Rozelle and the walk-ups of Marrickville. The region’s defining fact: a large share of its strata buildings were built or converted decades before NSW’s window safety laws existed, so many Inner West windows have never been formally assessed against the current standard. Every qualifying window tested to 125mm and 250 newtons, from three-lot terrace schemes to 40-unit blocks — same-day digital certificates. Call +61 2 8000 0287.
Haven Compliance — a NSW window safety specialist whose Inner West practice spans the region’s full, famously untidy variety: terrace conversions, two-lot semi splits, warehouse apartments, shop-top schemes, post-war walk-ups and the newer infill threading through all of it. Whether you manage a three-lot boutique strata on a Glebe terrace row or a forty-unit 1970s block near Marrickville Metro, the pricing structure and inspection process fit the building — and the standard never moves.
We treat the Inner West as one service territory because its portfolios work that way: managers run buildings across Leichhardt, Balmain, Newtown and Marrickville in the same week, and the region’s small self-managed schemes — its most numerous strata form — need the same machinery scaled down. Grouped scheduling for the portfolios, single-visit simplicity for the small schemes, photographic documentation for everyone.
Most of this region’s buildings predate the law by decades — which changes their history, and nothing about their obligation. 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 the Inner West — 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.
A century of conversion. The region’s signature is not any single building type but the conversion habit: Victorian terraces split into strata pairs, warehouses turned to apartments along Rozelle and Balmain’s old industrial edges, cottages divided, shops topped with flats, boarding houses reborn as units — plus the honest purpose-built layers, from inter-war flats through the 1960s-70s walk-up boom to today’s infill around the Metro corridors.
The compliance consequence is the region’s defining statistic: an enormous share of Inner West windows have never been formally assessed, because their buildings were converted before the law existed and their schemes are too small to have generated a compliance program spontaneously. Two-lot schemes barely know they are schemes; terrace conversions hide qualifying windows on rear elevations; and the walk-up stock carries fifty years of piecemeal retrofit hardware, only some of it rated for anything.
The good news matches the bad: Inner West buildings are mostly small, mostly simple to fix, and mostly one short visit from provable compliance. The gap is awareness, not cost.
Never-assessed windows — the region’s headline: buildings converted before the law, never tested since. Improvised heritage hardware — generations of owner-fitted latches in terrace joinery. Retrofit archaeology through the walk-up stock. Louvre banks in the post-war buildings, failing in ways ordinary restrictors cannot fix. Peninsula corrosion on Balmain and Rozelle’s water-facing hardware. And flyscreens standing in for real devices, in every conversion era alike.
By running both service modes at once. For managed portfolios: grouped scheduling across the region’s suburbs, per-building registers in one format, renewal reminders per building — the standard portfolio machinery. For the region’s thousands of small self-managed schemes: single-visit engagements arranged in one conversation, reports written in photographs a volunteer committee can act on, and the automated reminder carrying the compliance calendar no two-lot scheme keeps for itself.
The van carries the region’s full requirements — sympathetic sash hardware, robust screen solutions for louvre banks, marine-suitable components for the peninsula — so whatever the building presents, authorised fixes happen in the same visit. The inspection process guide sets out the whole visit in order.
This is the region the small-scheme tiers were made for — most Inner West schemes resolve to one known number, certificate included. 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. the Inner West 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.
All of them — with dedicated local pages where our work concentrates. See our suburb pages for Newtown, Marrickville, Leichhardt, Glebe, Balmain and Rozelle — each covering the local stock, its characteristic failures and how inspection day runs there. Annandale, Lilyfield, Birchgrove, Petersham, Stanmore, Dulwich Hill, Ashfield, Croydon, Haberfield, Five Dock and the rest of the corridor are serviced on the same runs — any Inner West address schedules like the rest.
The neighbouring Burwood and Strathfield pages cover the middle-ring extension of the same corridor; portfolio scheduling crosses the whole run. And for any address without its own page, the rule is the same everywhere: the pages mark where our work concentrates, never where the service stops — one call books any Inner West building onto the next run.
Small owners corporations and self-managed committees — the Inner West’s most numerous client, and the reason our photographic-report model exists. Strata managers running the region’s mixed portfolios, served with grouped scheduling and one register format. Property managers and landlords across a deep, young rental market, using unit inspections and end-of-lease window safety audits. Renovating owners — in Sydney’s most enthusiastic renovation belt, every project deserves a post-works window recheck before the paint hides another missing device.
That renovation point earns expansion, because no region renovates like this one. Every Inner West kitchen extension, repaint and window replacement is a quiet compliance event: devices come off for the work and stay off, replacement windows arrive bare, and the freshly finished room reads as improved while its window protection quietly ended. The regional habit worth adopting — for schemes and individual owners alike — is the post-works recheck: minutes per affected window, documented into the register, closing the gap every project opens.
Buildings that fold this into their renovation approvals never accumulate the silent non-compliance that otherwise defines the corridor.
Because the region’s buildings resist templates and its schemes resist bureaucracy — and most compliance services offer nothing but both. Our technicians assess the window that actually exists (terrace sash, warehouse pivot, louvre bank, shop-top oddity), test it under load, photograph the finding, and deliver documentation sized to its reader — volunteer committee or portfolio manager — with the certificate the same day.
One provider, whole chain, published pricing, single-visit completion wherever the building allows. And the standing honesty notes: NSW has no official inspector certification scheme, and no statute mandates annual inspection. The duty is a continuously compliant building — including the two-lot terrace that only just found out it is one.
By carrying the memory its small schemes cannot. The region’s compliance decays through forgetting more than failure: schemes without managers have no calendar, and a duty discovered once is lost by the next committee handover. Our annual program is the fix in structural form — automated reminders per scheme, short reinspection visits that retest under load and maintain in-visit, and photographic registers that roll forward comparable year on year, holding each building’s knowledge independent of who currently owns it.
Annual is best practice rather than statute, as stated everywhere. For a region of small, old, converted buildings, it is also the entire compliance system in one standing arrangement — one visit, one register, one reminder — multiplied across the most scheme-dense corridor in Sydney.
Because most were built or converted decades before the law existed, and their schemes — often two to six lots — never generated a compliance program. The first measured assessment is usually the building’s first, full stop.
Completely: one short visit assesses, fixes and certificates the whole scheme at the published small-scheme rates. The Inner West’s smallest schemes are our fastest full-cycle jobs.
Yes — non-standard configurations are the region’s specialty and ours: pivot windows assessed on their geometry, louvre banks resolved to robust screen solutions, all force-tested in place and documented with the reasoning.
Every Inner West address schedules on the same runs — the suburb pages mark where work concentrates, not where service stops. Call with any address in the corridor.
No. The law never fixed a timetable for inspections. An annual retest is the sensible habit, and for the region’s self-managed schemes our automated reminder makes it the one duty that runs without anyone remembering it.
Not sure which service tier fits your building? Our compliance specialists can help you understand your requirements and choose the right option.
