Pool Safety Checklist for Victorian Homeowners — 8 Barrier Checks Before Your Form 23

Reviewed by Ryan Gaw, VBA-registered pool safety inspector (IN-PS 100055), Local Pool Inspections.

Roughly 60% of the Victorian barriers I assess fail their renewal or pre-sale Form 23 the first time around. Almost none of them fail on anything unusual. It’s the same handful of items, year after year, and most are things a homeowner can find themselves with a tape measure and half an hour. This pool safety checklist is the one I’d want you to run the day before I arrive, across Greater Geelong, the Bellarine, Moorabool and Wyndham. Fix the obvious before I knock, and you may save yourself a Form 24 and a second visit.

Which standard applies to your pool?

Before you measure anything, work out which rulebook your pool sits under. It depends on when the barrier went in. Three separate standards are still live across Victoria under Part 9A of the Building Regulations 2018 (Vic), and your barrier is assessed against the one in force when it was built. It is not required to be upgraded to today’s standard, a point that catches out plenty of owners who assume the newest rules apply to them.

Pool put in within the last 15 years? You’re almost certainly under AS 1926.1–2012, the current standard. The older brick-and-paling setups I see through inland Geelong — Belmont, Highton, Newtown — more often land under an earlier standard, where the outside non-climbable zone runs 1200 mm rather than 900 mm. Not sure which era you’re in? Your building permit date settles it. Failing that, ring me before you start measuring, because the wrong NCZ radius can have you chasing a fault that isn’t one.

The Swimming Pool Safety Checklist — 8 Barrier Checks

Each item below maps to one of the eight pass/fail categories I work through on a Form 23 inspection under AS 1926.1-2012. Go in order, and measure honestly rather than optimistically; the number is the number. Anything that fails here is better fixed now than written up on a Form 24, which means remediation plus a return visit.

1. Barrier Height — 1200 mm Minimum

What to check: Walk the whole fence on the outside, the non-pool side, and measure straight up from the ground to the top of the panel at each section. Outside, not inside. The pool-side reading is irrelevant and always flatters the height.

Pass: Every reading is 1200 mm or higher, including at the lowest point the ground reaches along the run.

Common fail: Sloping blocks, where the ground falls away along the fence line. One low spot is enough. A barrier that’s a comfortable 1230 mm down its length but drops to 1180 mm at the back corner is a fail, full stop — the standard tests the weakest point, not the average. For how slope is handled, see our guide to the 1.2 m rule on sloped sites.

2. Vertical Rail Spacing — 100 mm Maximum

What to check: Measure the clear gap between adjacent vertical rails. You don’t need a special tool. A 100 mm offcut of timber from the shed does the job. If it slides through anywhere, that gap is over.

Pass: No gap between vertical elements exceeds 100 mm at any point along the barrier.

Common fail: Missing or split pickets in older timber-paling fences, and bent aluminium rails after a mower or a reversing car has caught them. Horizontal rails are a separate question. They create footholds rather than gaps, and the standard treats them differently. The 100 mm rail-spacing guide walks through both.

3. Gap Under Fence — 100 mm Maximum

What to check: Walk the fence line again, this time looking down. Any gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground gets the same offcut test.

Pass: 100 mm or less, measured at the highest point the ground reaches underneath the fence.

Common fail: Erosion and settlement on sloping sites, and root heave from a mature tree lifting the soil away from older fencing. This one creeps up slowly: the gap that was fine at the last inspection has often opened a centimetre or two by the next, which is exactly why it’s worth re-checking rather than assuming.

4. Gate Self-Close — From Any Position

This is the test most people get wrong, so it’s worth doing carefully. Don’t swing the gate wide and watch it slam shut; anyone’s gate does that. Open it just a few degrees, barely cracked, then take your hand off. From that small an opening it still has to swing shut and latch on its own. Repeat from fully open. Pass means it closes and latches unaided every time, from any angle and any starting position.

Common fail: A tired spring is the single most common Form 24 I write. Roughly 35% of failed inspections turn on this one item. The giveaway is a gate that snaps shut from wide open but stalls when it’s barely cracked, sitting there an inch short of the latch. A gap that size is enough for a small child to push through. Get the spring checked and replaced by a qualified installer before you book if it won’t pass. More on the self-close test and what a compliant spring needs to do.

5. Gate Latch Height — 1500 mm Minimum

What to check: Stand on the outside and measure from the ground up to the centre of the latch release. The catch is in what counts as “the ground”: it’s the surface a person actually stands on to reach the latch today, not wherever it sat when the latch was first fitted.

Pass: Latch centre at 1500 mm or higher above finished ground level.

Common fail: Usually it’s not the latch that’s moved, it’s the ground under it. New paving, a fresh load of mulch, soil that’s built up against the gate post over a few years: all of it raises the surface you stand on, which brings the latch lower relative to where a child is reaching from. A latch fitted dead on 1500 mm can read 1470 mm once a paving layer goes down, and that’s a fail. More on latch-height drift and how to fix it.

6. Non-Climbable Zone (NCZ)

What to check: Walk the outside perimeter (the side a child climbs from, not the pool side) and look for anything a small child could use to get a foot up. Anything that offers a foothold within the non-climbable zone is a problem: the zone is swept as an arc out from the top of the fence, on the outside face.

What counts as clear depends on your pool’s age:

• For pools installed from 1 May 2010 onwards: nothing climbable within 900 mm of the outside face of the barrier, swept as an arc from the top of the fence.
• For pools installed before 1 May 2010: nothing climbable within 1200 mm of the outside face of the barrier.

Common fail: This is the one that surprises owners most, because the thing breaching the zone is usually something they put there on purpose. Established plantings in the older Geelong gardens. The pool pump or filter sitting hard against the fence because that’s where the plumbing ran. A decorative retaining wall built straight into the zone. And outdoor furniture that drifts: a bench, a planter box, the kids’ trampoline, all creeping closer to the fence across a summer until one of them is a ladder. Full guide to the NCZ rule, including the era-specific measurements.

7. Windows and Doors Accessing the Pool Zone

What to check: Find every window or door that opens straight into the pool zone — the wall of the house often forms part of the barrier, and people forget the house has to comply too. Each opening must do one of three things:

• Be restricted to a maximum 100 mm opening by tool-removable fasteners, OR
• Have its own separate compliant barrier between the opening and the pool area, OR
• Have openable parts at least 1800 mm above the pool area floor

Common fail: The renovation door. A kitchen or family-room extension goes in, a lovely set of stacker doors opens straight onto the pool deck, and nobody told the builder the pool barrier rules still applied to that wall. No restrictor, no second barrier, clear run to the water. I see it most on homes where the pool predates the extension.

8. Hardware Integrity

For the last one, put your hands on every hinge, spring and latch rather than just eyeing them. You’re feeling for rust and corrosion, loose mounting bolts, cracked plastic catches, a hinge that grinds rather than swings, anything that won’t last the four years until the next certificate falls due. It passes if everything works smoothly and holds firm, with no wear likely to compromise it before then.

Common fail on the Bellarine and Surf Coast: Out near the coast it’s the salt that gets you. On exposed blocks it strips the protective coating off spring mechanisms and latches inside two to three years, and once the coating’s gone the rust follows quickly. If yours is showing corrosion, don’t gamble on it lasting. Have a licensed installer check the hardware rather than assuming it’ll hold.

Which Standard Applies to My Pool — What Changes Between Eras?

The eight checks above hold for every Victorian pool. Where the older barriers differ (anything installed before 1 May 2010), it’s in the detail, and these are the differences that trip people up:

• NCZ radius: 1200 mm outside (not 900 mm) — the most commonly missed Standard 1 difference.
• Boundary fences: Rules for the fence between you and a neighbour, where it forms part of the pool barrier, are slightly different under earlier standards. Your inspector will confirm what applies.
• Gate hinge protrusion: The 10 mm hinge protrusion limit applies to barriers installed from 1 May 2013 onwards only.
• Step and level-change rules (AS 1926.1–2012 only): Any raised paving, garden beds, or steps outside the barrier that reduce its effective height must be kept clear of the NCZ.

The oldest pools are a different matter again. Under AS 1926.1–1993, pre-1991 installations carry the 1200 mm outside clear zone and may permit setups you’d never see approved today: a wall of the building acting as the barrier, or a paling fence at 1500 mm. Don’t try to second-guess which provisions apply to a barrier that old; that’s my job on the day. Run the eight checks anyway. They’re a sound pre-inspection prompt whatever era your pool belongs to.

Pre-Booking Routine — The Day Before

Checklist walked? Good. There’s a short routine I’d run the day before, partly to catch last-minute fails and partly to save us both time once I’m on site:

1. Confirm your pool is registered on the Pool and Spa Register with your council — the inspector will check.
2. Clear gates and side passages so the inspector can reach the entire fence perimeter without obstruction.
3. Move any pool pumps or filter equipment out of the non-climbable zone if they are currently within it.
4. Sweep leaves and mulch off the deck; clear pool toys and floats from the zone.
5. Measure the latch height after removing any built-up paving or mulch around the gate post — restoring the original ground level often fixes a borderline latch-height fail without any other work.
6. Take date-stamped photos of the barrier before and after any corrections, in case of dispute.

In my experience that routine plus the eight checks heads off most of the Form 24 issues I see across Geelong and surrounds. The ones it won’t catch are the ones I’d expect you to leave to me: horizontal rails on the outside face of an older fence, retaining-wall geometry, the way a boundary fence is configured where it doubles as the pool barrier. Those need a licensed fencer or an inspector’s eye, and they’re not a homeowner failing — they’re just not a tape-measure job. Found something on your walk you can’t read? Call before you book rather than guess. There’s no charge for a question, and it beats a wasted re-inspection. See our local pool inspection coverage across Geelong, or the pre-sale inspection page if you’re selling.

What Happens at the Inspection

A visit runs 20–30 minutes for a typical residential pool. I work through every item that applies under the standard governing your barrier — tape measure, 100 mm gauge, latch-tension tester — and photograph each step for the Form 23 or Form 24 record. The photos matter: they’re your proof of what the barrier looked like on the day, which can settle an argument months later.

Pass, and the Form 23 certificate of barrier compliance is signed on the spot and lodged with your council the same day. It’s valid for four years, and it has to reach the council within 30 days of issue. I handle that lodgement, so the clock isn’t your problem.

Fail, and you get a Form 24 instead: each issue listed, the AS 1926.1 clause it breaches, and a photo of it. The re-inspection to clear those items is already covered by the $250 — no second invoice, no surprise. Fix what’s on the Form 24, give us a ring, and we’ll book the return visit for whenever suits you.

One thing worth knowing before you call: Local Pool Inspections does renewals and pre-sale inspections, not the initial sign-off on a brand-new pool. If your pool’s just been built, the building surveyor certifies the barrier as part of the build, and that first Form 23 is their job, not ours. We pick it up afterwards, on the four-yearly renewal and again when you sell. Registration is VBA building inspector licence IN-PS 100055, covering Greater Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, Moorabool Shire and Wyndham City most weekdays, with same-day lodgement on a clean pass.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is on a pool safety checklist for Victoria?

A Victorian swimming pool safety checklist covers eight items under AS 1926.1: barrier height (1200 mm minimum), vertical rail spacing (100 mm maximum), the gap under the fence (100 mm maximum), gate self-close from any position, gate latch height (1500 mm minimum), a clear non-climbable zone on the outside of the barrier, compliant windows and doors accessing the pool zone, and sound hardware with no corrosion or loose fittings.

Which pool barrier standard applies to my Victorian property?

It depends on when the barrier was installed. Three standards are in force under Part 9A of the Building Regulations 2018 (Vic). Pools installed from 1 May 2010 are assessed under AS 1926.1–2007 or AS 1926.1–2012 (the most common). Barriers installed between 1991 and 2010 fall under an earlier version; pre-1991 installations fall under the oldest standard. A barrier is assessed against the rules in effect when it was built and does not need to be upgraded to the current standard.

How wide can the gaps in a pool fence be?

Under all three Victorian standards, vertical elements must be no more than 100 mm apart, and the gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground must also be no more than 100 mm. These limits apply across the full length of the barrier.

What is the non-climbable zone and how far does it extend?

The non-climbable zone (NCZ) is a clear space on the outside of the barrier — the side a child would approach from — swept as an arc from the top of the fence. For pools installed from 1 May 2010, the NCZ radius is 900 mm. For pools installed before that date, the radius is 1200 mm. Any climbable object — pot plants, BBQs, outdoor furniture, pool pumps, retaining walls — within that arc is a non-compliance.

How long is a Form 23 pool safety certificate valid in Victoria?

A Form 23 certificate of barrier compliance is valid for four years and must be lodged with your council within 30 days of issue. Local Pool Inspections lodges the certificate with council the same day as a passing inspection.

What does a pool barrier inspection cost in Victoria?

Local Pool Inspections charges $250 all-inclusive (inc. GST) for a Form 23 inspection covering Greater Geelong, the Bellarine, Moorabool, and Wyndham. The fee covers the inspection, council lodgement, and a free re-inspection if remediation is required. There is no second invoice.