The rule, in the document’s own words

Planning for Bush Fire Protection 2019 sets it out directly. For Complying Development, a BAL Certificate from the local council or a recognised consultant stating that the BAL of the development is not BAL-40 or BAL-FZ as applicable must be obtained prior to the issue of a Complying Development Certificate.

Two things follow, and both matter commercially.

First, a BAL Certificate is a precondition, not paperwork that catches up later. It has to exist before the CDC issues, and it has to come from the council or a recognised consultant rather than from the builder’s or supplier’s own assessment.

Second, and this is the part that reshapes a job: the certificate must state the development is not BAL-40 or BAL-FZ. If the site rates at either of those, the complying development route is not available to it, and the work goes down the development application path instead. Different timeline, different cost, different certainty.

Why a window business should care about somebody else’s approval

Because the two highest ratings are exactly the ones that drive the most demanding window protection, and therefore the jobs where a shutter or screen is most likely to be specified. The same rating that makes your product necessary can also be the one that moves the whole project onto a slower approval track.

If you are quoting on a bushfire-rated job and the timeline assumes a complying development certificate, the BAL is the thing to confirm before you commit to it. A site that comes back BAL-40 does not just change the product schedule; it can change when work is allowed to start at all.

Who is and is not in this process

Worth knowing before anyone points at the fire service. Of the complying development approval route, the document says the NSW RFS is not a participant in any part of this approval process.

So the certificate comes from the council or a recognised consultant, the CDC comes from the certifier, and the RFS is not the body to chase for either. It also encourages, without requiring, that a BAL Certificate state the BAL that applies to the Complying Development in question rather than merely confirming what it is not. A certificate that names the level is more useful to everyone downstream, including whoever is specifying the windows.

Where this sits with the rest of it

We have covered the two neighbouring pieces. How a property gets its rating in the first place, and why that assessment method is free to read in NSW, is in how a property gets its BAL. What the construction requirements themselves cost to look up is in the rulebook for bushfire shutters costs $286.63. This page is the middle step that connects them: the rating, then the pathway, then the build.

What this page does not tell you

It does not tell you whether any particular site qualifies for complying development, which depends on much more than bushfire rating, and it does not set out the construction requirements at BAL-40 or BAL-FZ, because those sit in AS 3959 and that document is licensed. Nothing from it is reproduced here. This is the NSW pathway; other states run their own planning systems.

How we made this

Read from Planning for Bush Fire Protection 2019, published free by the NSW Rural Fire Service and read on 24 August 2026. The document is typeset in two columns and text extraction interleaves them mid-sentence, so every quotation above is a short passage confirmed to read contiguously in the source, and the sentence about BAL Certificates is quoted in fragments for that reason rather than stitched together.

This is general information about a planning pathway, not legal or building advice, and it is not a substitute for a BAL assessment or advice from a certifier. We have not spoken to the NSW RFS, any council or any certifier.