In Queensland you must not enter into an accommodation agreement for a property with a non-shared pool unless a pool safety certificate is in effect. Certificates are valid for two years on a non-shared pool and one year on a shared pool. Selling is different: a Form 36 lets a sale proceed, giving the buyer 90 days from settlement to obtain one.
By Kayla Dale, Senior Property Manager and Sales Agent, FAA Property. Last reviewed 3 September 2026.
Selling has an escape hatch. Leasing does not.
This is the whole page in two sentences, and almost every guide to this leads with the wrong one.
If you sell a Queensland property with a non-shared pool and you have no certificate, you can lodge a Form 36 with the QBCC, give the buyer a copy before settlement, and the buyer then has 90 days to obtain one. The sale proceeds.
If you lease it, there is no equivalent. QBCC's wording is that you must not enter into an accommodation agreement unless a pool safety certificate is in effect.
So a landlord cannot sign a tenant up and sort the certificate out afterwards. The certificate has to exist before the agreement does, and that ordering is the thing that catches owners who have just decided to rent out a home they used to live in.
Two years or one, and it depends on who else uses the pool
There are two validity periods and the difference is not the pool, it is the sharing.
A non-shared pool, the ordinary case for a house or a townhouse with its own pool, gets a certificate valid for two years.
A shared pool, the kind in a unit complex where the body corporate maintains it, gets one year.
The shorter period on shared pools is worth knowing if you own a unit, because the certificate is generally the body corporate's job rather than yours, and a lapse is something you inherit rather than cause. Ask the body corporate for the current certificate and its expiry before you list the unit for rent, not after.
- 2 years
- Non-shared pool certificate
- Source: QBCC
- 1 year
- Shared pool certificate
- Source: QBCC
- 90 days
- After settlement, to obtain one
- Source: QBCC
It is Form 23, whatever else you have read
Business Queensland publishes the list of pool safety forms, and the pool safety certificate is Form 23. Access to it is restricted to licensed pool safety inspectors, which is why you cannot fill one in yourself.
You will see Form 24 quoted as the certificate on pages that currently rank for this search. It is not on the government's list at all.
We are not going to name anyone, and it is an easy mistake to make. It matters only because a wrong form number is the sort of thing that makes a conveyancer or an agent doubt everything else on the page it appears on.
The forms worth knowing by number, if you are dealing with this once and want to sound like you have done it before, are below.
| Form | What it is | Who lodges it |
|---|---|---|
| Form 23 | Pool safety certificate | A licensed pool safety inspector |
| Form 36 | Notice of no pool safety certificate | The seller, when selling without one |
| Form 26 | Pool safety nonconformity notice | The inspector, when a pool fails |
| Form 28 | Application for pool safety standard exemption | The owner |
| Form 39 | Notice of proposed fencing work for a pool barrier | The owner |
Source: Business Queensland
Check the register before you commission anything
QBCC keeps a pool register you can search by address. It will tell you whether a pool at that address is registered and whether a certificate is current.
Two reasons to look before you book an inspector. A certificate may already be in effect from a previous sale or lease, in which case you need nothing. And an unregistered pool has to be registered, which is a separate step from being certified.
The register also lists licensed pool safety inspectors, which is the right way to find one. The certificate is only valid if the person issuing it holds a licence.
The whole check takes a couple of minutes and it is free, which is a better use of them than most things on a landlord's list.
What a failed inspection actually looks like
An inspector who finds the barrier non-compliant issues a nonconformity notice rather than simply declining, and that notice sets out what has to change.
In our experience the recurring items are unglamorous and cheap: a gate that does not self-close from any position, a latch below the required height, a climbable object left inside the safety zone, and gaps under a fence line that has moved with the ground.
The one that costs real money is a barrier that was compliant with an older standard and is not compliant now, because that is a rebuild rather than an adjustment.
Local councils can fine an owner whose pool barrier does not comply, and that sits alongside the certificate requirement rather than instead of it. A property can have a lapsed certificate and a compliant fence, or a current certificate and a fence that has since been damaged. They are two different obligations.
On the Sunshine Coast specifically
Pools are common enough in the properties we manage that this is a routine part of taking on a new rental rather than an edge case.
The sequence that works is: search the QBCC register for the address, book a licensed inspector if there is no current certificate, get the work done if a nonconformity notice comes back, and only then advertise. Advertising first and discovering the pool problem during the application stage is how a property ends up sitting empty for three weeks.
We manage residential property across the Sunshine Coast from one office in Maroochydore. We are not pool safety inspectors, we do not issue certificates, and we take no referral fee from anyone who does.
What we can do is tell you the order to do things in, which is the part that costs money when it goes wrong.
Common questions
Two years for a non-shared pool, which is the ordinary case for a house or a townhouse with its own pool, and one year for a shared pool, such as one maintained by a body corporate in a unit complex. The shorter period on shared pools matters to unit owners, because obtaining that certificate is generally the body corporate's responsibility rather than the individual owner's.
No. QBCC's position is that you must not enter into an accommodation agreement unless a pool safety certificate is in effect. The certificate has to exist before the tenancy agreement is signed, not afterwards. This is stricter than the rule for selling, where a Form 36 lets a sale proceed and gives the buyer 90 days from settlement to obtain one. There is no equivalent for leasing.
Form 23. Business Queensland's published list of pool safety forms names Form 23 as the pool safety certificate, and access to it is restricted to licensed pool safety inspectors. Form 36 is a different document, the notice of no pool safety certificate, which applies to sales rather than leases. Some pages currently ranking for this search quote a different number.
For a shared pool, obtaining the certificate is generally the body corporate's job, and it is valid for one year rather than two. As a lot owner leasing your unit, you still need a certificate to be in effect before you sign a tenant up, so the practical step is to ask the body corporate for the current certificate and its expiry date before you advertise, rather than assuming it is current.
The inspector issues a nonconformity notice setting out what has to change, rather than simply refusing. Most failures are small and cheap: a gate that does not self-close from every position, a latch mounted too low, something climbable inside the safety zone, or a gap under a fence that has shifted. The expensive failure is a barrier built to an older standard that no longer complies, because that is a rebuild.
No. Only a licensed pool safety inspector can issue one, and the QBCC pool register lists them. FAA does not issue certificates, does not inspect pools and takes no referral fee from any inspector. What we do is manage the sequence for the properties we look after, so a certificate is in place before a property is advertised rather than discovered to be missing during the application stage.
Where to next
- Minimum housing standards in Queensland/minimum-housing-standards-qld
- Entry and exit condition reports/condition-reports-qld
- Property management on the Sunshine Coast/property-management-sunshine-coast
- Landlord services on the Sunshine Coast/landlord-services-sunshine-coast
- Get a free rental appraisal/free-rental-appraisal-sunshine-coast
- Notice to Leave QLD/notice-to-leave-qld
- Rental Bond QLD/rental-bond-qld
- Breaking a Lease QLD/breaking-a-lease-qld
- Smoke Alarm Legislation QLD/smoke-alarm-legislation-qld
General information only, last reviewed on the date above. The lease prohibition, both certificate validity periods, the Form 36 route and the 90-day rule are published by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, and the form numbers are Business Queensland's, reproduced rather than interpreted. This page doesn't consider your circumstances and isn't legal advice; whether a particular pool or barrier complies is a question for a licensed pool safety inspector, and whether a particular agreement may be entered into is one for your solicitor. FAA Property Pty Ltd is a licensed Queensland real estate agency, OFT licence 4220395. FAA is not a pool safety inspector, does not issue or assess certificates, and receives no referral fee from any inspector.