Security, safety and emergency access in retirement villages

How intense are the regulations and requirements in your state for emergency management in retirement villages?

In NSW we are expecting them to get a lot tighter and we expect the rest of the states will follow.

This is because in particular fire regulations were heavily discussed by residents who spoke up at the Kathryn Greiner retirement village inquiry meetings we attended.

Put simply, the residents gave repeated examples where operators were slack in following fire signage and egress regulations, plus few had evacuation plans.

One example was a resident in a wheelchair living on a fifth floor with no fire evacuation plan – especially when the lift is out of action.

Another was the lack of a roll call process to check everybody was at an assembly point.

We checked and this is the current information sheet available to NSW village managers – click HERE.

Email back to us your thoughts on the regulations and requirements for emergency response (fire etc).

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