Register a new pool or spa with Melton City Council or Moorabool Shire within 30 days of receiving the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection, and lodge the building surveyor’s barrier certificate with that application. The surveyor certifies a new barrier, not a private inspector. Council then writes with your next due date: four years after that lodgement.
Four-yearly certificate coming up in Melton or Moorabool? Book your four-yearly pool inspection with Local Pool Inspections, IN-PS 100055, for $250 flat.
So if you have just moved into a new build with a pool, there are three things to do and none of them is booking me. Register within 30 days, with the surveyor’s certificate attached. Keep council’s letter. Diary the date it gives you. We cover the Melton and Moorabool corridor when that date comes round: $250 flat, same-day certificate where the barrier is compliant.
When does the 30-day registration clock start?
On the day you receive your certificate of final inspection or occupancy permit. Not the day the pool was dug. Not the day the fence went up, and not the day you got the keys. The 30-day pool registration rule in Victoria is regulation 147M of the Building Regulations 2018, and it covers every pool or spa whose building permit was issued on or after 1 November 2020, whether it went in at a new-estate handover or behind a 1980s weatherboard. Both Moorabool and Melton repeat it in the same words: a new pool or spa “must be registered within 30 days of receiving a certificate of final inspection”.
What people guess instead is settlement, or handover, or the first swim. None of those. Because the clock runs from receipt, the date that counts is the day the certificate reached you, so ask your builder or surveyor to send it in writing and keep the email. A rough memory of what month you moved in will not survive a council query two years later.
Who certifies the barrier on a brand-new pool?
The building surveyor named on your building permit. Not a private pool inspector, and not us.
That catches people out, and fairly, because every other pool in Victoria runs the other way round. On an existing pool the owner picks up the phone and engages a registered inspector like me. A brand-new pool is not that. Its barrier is inspected as part of the construction sign-off, by the surveyor who has been across the permit since before the hole was dug, and regulation 147Y(1) has that surveyor issue the certificate of pool and spa barrier compliance and give it to you. On a new pool, Form 23 is still the form it comes on (regulation 147Y(4)). I cannot issue that one. Registration asks for the surveyor’s certificate specifically, so if anyone offers you a separate handover inspection, ask what it is for before you pay for it.
At handover you are not shopping for an inspection. You are chasing paperwork from two people who already have it: your builder and your surveyor.
Who applies for registration: you, or your builder?
You do. Under regulation 147M the application is the owner’s job, and the surveyor’s certificate goes in with it. Settlement does not trigger it for you. Nothing does. In a new estate the job falls into a gap: you assume the builder has it in hand, the builder assumes it went with the handover pack, and months later the pool is not on the register. Ask your builder outright. Have you started this, or is it mine?
How do I register with Melton or Moorabool council?
Melton City Council takes registrations online through its eServices site, ecouncil.melton.vic.gov.au, where you sign in or create an account, and the same site takes compliance certificate uploads. Moorabool Shire Council uses its Greenlight portal, and you need a user profile before you can register online. Moorabool’s page says the compliance certificate goes through the same Greenlight portal you registered on. On an existing pool those are two separate jobs years apart. On a new pool they happen together, so have the surveyor’s certificate saved before you open the form. Council sets the registration fee, and the regulations cap it at 2.15 fee units (regulation 147P).
After registering, council must write to you (regulation 147R). The notice confirms the pool is registered and states the construction date council has determined, which barrier standard applies, how to appeal that date to the Building Appeals Board within 30 days, and when your next certificate is due. Keep that letter somewhere you will find it in four years. The standard your barrier is measured against is council’s determination, recorded on the register. You don’t work it out from the age of the pool, and your inspector doesn’t choose it on the day. It is the first document I ask for. We wrote up what a council pool barrier letter tells you, if yours has landed and you are not sure what to do with it.
What if you miss the 30-day registration deadline?
Missing it is an offence. Regulation 147M(2) carries a penalty of up to 10 penalty units, and it is one of the offences a council’s municipal building surveyor can deal with by a building infringement notice, which carries 2 penalty units under regulation 278. A council that finds an unregistered pool can also give you written notice to register within a set period of at least 14 days (regulation 147O). Melton’s own page warns that owners who don’t register “may face an on-the-spot fine”. If you are already past the deadline, register now, with the surveyor’s certificate. Registering late is the fix.
The other cost of staying off the register is that nobody writes to you. Council’s letter is what tells you when your next certificate is due. No registration means no letter, which means no date in your calendar, while the obligation carries on regardless. An unregistered pool does not get a quieter set of rules. It just gets no reminders.
When is the next certificate due, and who inspects for it?
Regulation 147R(3) sets the date at four years after your first certificate was lodged with council, and regulation 147V(4)(b) applies the same rule to every certificate after that. Not four years after the inspection, and not after handover. Those are different dates, because the surveyor can sign weeks before you lodge. The notice council sends is the authoritative date, not your own count forward. Put it in the calendar the day it arrives.
That four-yearly certificate is the inspection we do. I measure the barrier against the standard named in your council letter, starting at the gate and working round the fence. Where the barrier is compliant you get a same-day Form 23, and you lodge it with your council within 30 days of issue. We issue the certificate. The lodgement, and council’s lodgement fee, are yours. Do it promptly, because the day you lodge is the day council counts your next due date from. The visit runs about 30 minutes and costs $250 flat.
Four years is a long time in a back yard. Gate springs weaken. Soil settles under a post and drops a self-closing gate just far enough out of line that it stops latching on its own. The shrubs that went in as sticks at handover are a climbing frame by the fourth summer, and the trampoline nobody thought about is parked against the fence. None of that is neglect. It is what a yard does while you live in it. The barrier still gets measured against the same standard as before. Our four-year re-inspection guide covers what that visit checks and how to prepare for it.
For the detail before then, our guide to register your pool with council walks the registration end to end, the Melton pool barrier compliance and Moorabool pool barrier compliance pages set out what each council checks, and our Form 23 certificate guide explains what that certificate confirms.
Cobblebank, Weir Views, Fraser Rise or Darley: which council is yours?
The clock is identical in both municipalities. The portal you register on is not, and estate branding is no guide to it, so go by the address: your rates notice names your council. Cobblebank, Weir Views and Fraser Rise sit in the City of Melton, and Darley is in Moorabool Shire. Register with the wrong one and you have not broken anything, only spent an evening doing it twice.
We inspect across this corridor, including pool inspections in Cobblebank, pool inspections in Weir Views, pool inspections in Fraser Rise and pool inspections in Darley.
Pool safety services we provide
Common questions about registering a new pool in Melton or Moorabool
Is a pool permit in Victoria the same as pool registration?
No, and they get mixed up constantly. A building permit is the approval to build, and the building surveyor on that permit signs off the finished barrier. Registration is the separate council record the owner applies for. The permit doesn’t start the 30-day clock. Receiving the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection does.
Do I need to book a private pool inspector for my brand-new pool?
No. The building surveyor on your permit certifies the barrier when the build is signed off, and you lodge that certificate with your registration application. A registered pool safety inspector comes in later, for the certificate due four years after that lodgement, and for each four-yearly certificate after it.
When is my first four-yearly pool certificate due?
Four years after your first certificate is lodged with council, under regulation 147R(3). Lodgement is your own act and can fall weeks after the surveyor signs, so counting from the inspection or handover gives the wrong date. Council’s registration notice states the exact due date, so go by that letter rather than counting forward yourself.
Is the 30-day registration clock the same as the compliance check when I sell?
No. The 30-day clock is about getting a new pool onto council’s register. A sale sets no new pool deadline: under regulation 147ZL council records the buyer and writes to them with the date the next certificate is due. Our Section 32 pool compliance timeline for sellers covers the selling side.
Which council do I register with: Melton or Moorabool?
The one your rates notice names, because estate branding pays no attention to municipal boundaries. Cobblebank, Weir Views and Fraser Rise addresses register with Melton City Council through its eServices site. Darley addresses register with Moorabool Shire Council through the Greenlight portal. Any council correspondence about the build will name the right council too.