Keep family and tenants safe with a home safety inspection

RACV offers three safety-orientated property inspection reports – Landlord Safety Inspection, Child Safety Inspection and Senior Safety Inspection. The purpose of these inspections is to identify potential health and safety hazards in residential homes and investment properties and to make recommendations as to how the associated risks can be mitigated. This ensures your property, whether owned or managed, is safe for your loved ones and tenants.

An RACV safety inspection and report is not the same as a pre-purchase, compliance or building certification report. The premise for the report is first and foremost regarding safety by alerting homeowners to safety risks and providing options to mitigate those risks. The scope of the inspection is based on statistics associated with hospital treated home injuries, general medical practice presentation, legal claims for injury or death, and reported safety issues at a reasonable persons’ expectation and considered common sense.

Guidance for the inspection scope has been received via excerpts from several building codes, practices, Australian Standards, and various published reports such as the Monash University Report into slips, trips and falls. Please note we do not purport to encompass all of the inclusions in those documents. An RACV report is a result of findings based on a clear scope of inclusions and exclusions and, may at times, include comments associated with legislated requirements both current, retrospective or non-retrospective.

Note: Acting on “Major” imminently life-threatening issues discovered is strongly recommended and as per “The Inspectors Code of Conduct” any such issues are brought to the attention of the home occupants, if present, and/or property manager so that immediate attention to the matter can be managed.

An RACV report is a visual inspection of the property whereby trained inspectors aim to identify any safety issues in that property and report on them in accordance to the type of report ordered. It is important to understand that it is not an intrusive or all-encompassing report dealing with the property from every aspect. The recommendations are limited to residential health and safety issues where there are reasonably foreseeable risks that could result in sickness, injury or death. The Report is prepared on the basis that the use of the building will continue as a residential property and IS NOT suitable for Workplace Health and Safety purposes.

For more information:

• Download the Landlord Safety Inspection scope
• Download the Child Safety Inspection scope
• Download the Senior Safety Inspection scope

See our Terms and Conditions.

Incidents that occur in and around the home is significant and may result in serious injury or death. Furthermore, incidents that occur within the home such as children falling from windows, slips and falls, injuries caused by gas leaks or electrical faults and could often have been prevented if the hazard had been identified and addressed.

The Courts have established that as a landlord you have duty of care to your tenants and as such if a tenant or entrant was injured at the property you may be exposed to a legal claim, especially if there was a defect which was either known or should have been known.

Unfortunately, the identification of defects may not be straight forward but as the landlord you are expected to have taken reasonable care to avoid foreseeable harm to your tenant. Most managing agents are not qualified or equipped to recognise all safety issues in your property. An RACV Property Inspection will ensure you are informed, and your property manager has the tools at hand to protect your interests.