What is protection work on a pool build?

Why a pool triggers it more often than an extension does

Practice Note 05-2018 puts the obligation on the surveyor at permit stage: “When assessing an application for a building permit to construct a pool, spa and safety barrier, the RBS must consider whether to require protection work to protect adjoining property.”

Pools attract this more than most domestic building work, and the reason is geometric rather than legal. A pool is a deep, open excavation, and pools go where the house is not — which is usually the back or the side of a block, close to a boundary.

Three things follow from that:

• Depth. A typical pool excavation is far deeper than a footing trench, and removing soil removes lateral support from everything around it, including the ground under a neighbour's fence, shed, garage or paving.
• Proximity. Small suburban blocks push pools close to boundaries, and the zone of influence of an excavation extends outwards as well as downwards.
• Machinery. Excavators, trucks and craned-in equipment impose loads near boundaries that the ground there was never asked to carry.

Protection work is the mechanism that handles all of this before the digging starts rather than after something moves. It sits alongside the separate obligation to fence the excavation, which is covered in what happens on the day the pool is excavated.

The 14 day rule, and why silence counts as agreement

This is the part worth knowing whichever side of the fence you are on. The sequence is set by the Building Act 1993.

Section 84 requires an owner who must carry out protection work to serve notice, before commencing the building work, on the adjoining owner and the relevant building surveyor. The notice must include prescribed details of the building work and of the protection work — “the nature, location, time and duration of the protection work”.

Section 85 then gives the adjoining owner three options, and a deadline of “not later than 14 days after service”:

• agree to the proposed protection work;
• disagree, giving notice to the owner and the surveyor; or
• require more information so the surveyor can consider the proposal.

And then subsection (2), in the authorised text of the Act: “an adjoining owner who fails to give a notice under subsection (1) within the required time is taken to have agreed to the proposed protection work.”

That is a deemed consent, and it is unusual. Most statutory notice regimes treat silence as a refusal or as nothing at all; this one treats it as a yes. Section 86 then allows the owner to proceed once the adjoining owner “agrees or is taken to have agreed”, after obtaining any necessary permits.

The rule cuts both ways, and it is worth stating both:

• Building a pool? A neighbour who ignores your notice has not blocked you. The 14 days run and you may proceed.
• Received a notice? Do not put it aside. Fourteen days of inaction is a decision, and it is the decision to accept whatever was proposed.

If the neighbour disagrees or asks for more information, section 87 hands the question to the relevant building surveyor, who “must examine the proposal for protection work and determine the appropriateness or otherwise of the work”. There is also a right, under section 92, for the adjoining owner to inspect the plans and specifications held by the surveyor, without charge.

The insurance obligation, and the number attached to ignoring it

Section 93 of the Building Act is the provision with real teeth, and it is the one most likely to be skipped by an owner-builder working from a checklist.

“Before any protection work is commenced in respect of an adjoining property, an owner must ensure that a contract of insurance is in force” against two things:

• “damage by the proposed protection work to the adjoining property”; and
• “any liabilities likely to be incurred to adjoining occupiers and members of the public during the carrying out of the building work and for a period of 12 months after that building work is completed”.

The amount is agreed between the owner and the adjoining owner, or determined by the Building Appeals Board if they cannot agree. A copy of the contract of insurance must be lodged with the adjoining owner before the protection work commences.

Now the consequence. The penalty for failing to have that insurance in force is 500 penalty units for a natural person, and 2,500 for a body corporate. Victoria fixed the value of a penalty unit at $209.10 for the year commencing 1 July 2026.

500 × $209.10 = $104,550. For a body corporate, 2,500 units is $522,750. Failing to lodge the copy with the adjoining owner carries a further 50 penalty units, which is $10,455.

Those are maximum penalties rather than fines anyone should expect to receive for an oversight, and they are set by a court. But the scale tells you how the legislature views the obligation: a maximum penalty exceeding the cost of the pool itself is not how the law describes a formality. The 12 month tail is the detail most likely to be missed when comparing policies — cover has to survive completion, not end at it.

What to do, in order, if this applies to you

If you are building.

• Raise it at permit stage. The surveyor must consider whether protection work is required, so ask what their view is rather than waiting to be told.
• Identify the adjoining owner. Section 84A now requires an owner to take reasonable steps to find the name and address of the adjoining owner, and section 84B allows a written request to the council for those details, with prescribed information and a fee, where you cannot.
• Serve the notice before commencing, with the nature, location, time and duration of the protection work.
• Put the insurance in force and lodge a copy with the adjoining owner before any protection work starts.
• Keep the 14 days in your programme. It is a real, unavoidable sequence step, not a formality to run in parallel with mobilising.

If you have received a notice.

• Diarise day 14 immediately. Silence is agreement.
• If anything is unclear, use the third option — require more information. It is a designed response, not an obstruction, and it brings the surveyor in.
• Ask the surveyor to see the plans. Section 92 entitles you to inspect them on request, without charge.
• Agree the insurance amount, and check it covers the 12 months after completion.
• Photograph and date the condition of your property along the boundary before work starts. If a dispute about damage arises later, contemporaneous images are the evidence that settles it.

The common thread is that this regime runs on dates and documents, and both sides are better off treating it that way. If you are still choosing a builder, whether they have handled protection work before is a fair question to ask while comparing pool quotes — on a tight block it is one of the things that separates a realistic programme from an optimistic one. Our guide on preparing your block for a pool quote covers the site factors that make it more likely.

Common questions

Sources

• Building Act 1993 (Vic) — authorised version, Part 7 Protection of adjoining property
• VBA Practice Note 05-2018 — Swimming Pool and Spa Safety (council-published copy)
• Victorian Government — value of a fee unit and a penalty unit, Monetary Units Act 2004 s6

General information only, current at 2026-09-20. Pool rules differ by state and by council, and penalty amounts are updated regularly. Confirm your own obligations with your council or a registered inspector before acting.