Pool Inspections in
Surf Coast Shire

The single thing Surf Coast owners get wrong is the council. Torquay sits twenty minutes from central Geelong, the bigger name next door, so people assume their pool paperwork goes to the City of Greater Geelong. It doesn't. Torquay, Jan Juc, Bellbrae, Bells Beach and Anglesea are all inside Surf Coast Shire, and Surf Coast holds its own pool and spa register, separate from Geelong's.

That matters the moment a sale is on. Say a conveyancer lodged your Form 23 against Greater Geelong last cycle, or you bought the place after years in Geelong and never gave it a thought. Your certificate is now sitting in a register that doesn't cover your address. On the shire's own records you read as non-compliant, even with a valid certificate in a drawer somewhere.

Under the Building Regulations 2018 (Vic), every pool or spa that can hold water more than 300 mm deep has to be registered with the council it physically sits in. Surf Coast Shire runs that register itself, in-house, for everything inside its boundary. There's no Victoria-wide database to fall back on. The record is the shire's, and a pool that changed hands from a Geelong address doesn't carry its old registration across the boundary with it.

See all our service areas for the full coverage map across Greater Geelong, the Bellarine and the Surf Coast.

Surf Coast Shire keeps the lodgement step simple: you send the certificate to the council's building team. Email is the preferred method, and it's the fastest. There's no portal account to set up first the way some councils make you.

The sequence is the same one that applies everywhere in Victoria. Only the council you send it to changes:

1. A VBA-registered inspector assesses the barrier on site against the version of AS 1926.1 that applied when the pool was built. A Victorian pool keeps the standard it was built under, not whatever is current.
2. If it passes, the inspector signs the Form 23 before leaving the property.
3. You then lodge that signed Form 23 with Surf Coast Shire's building team, within 30 days of the issue date. The owner submits it, not the inspector — that's the council's rule here — and it's the step that actually makes you compliant on the shire's records. Email is the preferred and fastest channel.
4. The shire records the certificate against your address. A lodgement fee applies, paid directly to the council — $22.50 as at 2026 (check the shire's current rate; council fees move each financial year).

Ryan tells you exactly where the Form 23 goes on the day of the inspection, so it's not a job you have to puzzle out afterward. The shire's pool and spa register page sets out the submission details: surfcoast.vic.gov.au — pool and spa register.

The BPC sets out the inspection requirement here: vba.vic.gov.au — pool inspections and compliance.

Victorian pools and spas are on a four-year re-inspection cycle — a fresh barrier inspection is required every four years. A Form 23 itself certifies the barrier was compliant on the day it was inspected; it is not a licence that stays "valid" for a set period, so once you are due for re-inspection, an old certificate no longer reflects compliance. Separately, each Form 23 must be lodged with Surf Coast Shire within 30 days of issue. Two different deadlines, then: the 30-day lodgement window, and the four-year re-inspection cycle.

Where this catches people is the lapse they didn't see coming. The certificate sits in a drawer, the four years quietly run out, and the first reminder is often a council notice or a conveyancer asking for a current copy mid-sale. If your certificate has expired, or you can't put your hands on it and aren't sure of the expiry, ring us on 0402 860 499. We'll work out where you stand before that happens.

Most of Surf Coast Shire sits within a few kilometres of the water, and that changes what fails on a barrier. Inland, the usual culprits are tired timber fences and pools that predate the current standard. On the coast the enemy is salt.

Salt air corrodes gate latches and hinge springs faster than anything inland. A self-closing gate that passed cleanly four years ago can quietly seize, or lose its spring tension, by the next renewal. Not through neglect. Just through sitting in coastal air. It's the single most common reason a Surf Coast barrier that "looked fine" fails a renewal inspection. The fix is usually marine-grade hardware rather than the cheapest latch on the shelf, because the cheap one is what corroded in the first place.

This is the same failure pattern seen out on the Bellarine, and it's worth knowing before your inspection rather than after. If your gate hardware is the original builder's fitting and the pool is anywhere near the coast, budget for it being the thing that needs replacing.

A lot of Surf Coast demand right now is the newer Torquay estates coming around to their first renewal. Quay 2000, the Dunes and Stretton Drive went up after 2015. The original builder's handover certificates are reaching their four-year mark, and plenty of those owners have never booked an inspection, because the pool has only ever had the one certificate it came with.

Here's the trap with a new pool. A barrier can have been built dead to standard and still be out of certification, because the pool falls due for re-inspection like any other — four years from the handover certificate's issue date. Dig out the original certificate, check the issue date, and if it's coming up, or already past, book before the council writes to you.

If the barrier doesn't meet the standard on the day, the Form 23 simply doesn't get issued. There's no partial pass. What you get instead is a written defect report listing every item, so you know exactly what has to change. A routine fail like this is a defect report, not a Form 24. A Form 24 is a separate escalation, issued only where a barrier repeatedly fails re-inspection or poses an immediate threat to life.

From there it's four steps:

1. You get the defect report in writing.
2. You fix the items — a contractor for the bigger jobs, DIY where it's genuinely within reach.
3. Ryan comes back and re-checks the work.
4. Barrier passes, Form 23 issued.

Re-inspections after remediation are free. There is no second call-out charge to come back and confirm a fix.

A Surf Coast pool safety inspection is $250 flat. That one price covers the inspection, the Form 23 where the barrier passes, and showing you exactly how to lodge it with Surf Coast Shire. No call-out fee, nothing added at the end.

The shire's own lodgement fee is the one cost that sits outside that — $22.50 as at 2026, paid straight to Surf Coast Shire. Council fees change each financial year, so check their current rate.

Ryan covers the Surf Coast coastal strip about one day a week, so booking ahead matters here more than it does in Geelong. That gets tighter again over summer, when the holiday rentals all want certificates at once. To book or check a date: 0402 860 499 or info@localpoolinspections.com.

Local Pool Inspections services the Surf Coast coastal core. Each suburb lodges with Surf Coast Shire — never Greater Geelong.

View all our service areas across Greater Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula and Surf Coast Shire.

Ryan Gaw is a Registered Pool Safety Inspector with the BPC, VBA Registration IN-PS 100055, in the Building Inspectors (Pool Safety) class. He operates Local Pool Inspections, servicing Surf Coast Shire, Greater Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, Moorabool & Melton Shires and surrounding areas. The registration is public, and you can verify it on the VBA practitioner register before you book: bams.vba.vic.gov.au — practitioner search. A passing barrier gets its Form 23 the same day.