Early Childhood Education Centres and Building Code compliance
8 December 2009
Guidance for the owners, designers, and builders of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECE) Centres and building consent authorities (BCAs) about building work associated with the centres.
ECE Centres operate within a regulatory framework of minimum requirements for (among other things) supervision, premises and facilities, and health and safety. When owners are constructing or altering ECE centres they need to ensure that both the Building Act 2004 (the Act) and Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008 requirements are met.
The Department has been working with the Ministry of Education to assist the centres through the building consent process during construction and alteration. The particular issues looked at are:
- Access for people with disabilities while maintaining the safety of children
- Adequate privacy for children using the toilets
- Upgrading requirements when an early childhood centre is altered or a building undergoes a change of use, such as when a house is converted into an ECE centre.
Children’s safety, and access for people with disabilities
The Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008, and associated Licensing Criteria, have been developed to ensure minimum health, safety and quality standards are maintained in the provision of early childhood education. It is important that the children are supervised at all times and all reasonable steps are taken to ensure their health and safety. To ensure this, children must not be able to leave the premises unaided or unnoticed by staff.
The Act requires provisions for access by people with disabilities to and within all buildings where people are expected to visit or work. This includes ECE centres. Also, all new building work must comply with the Building Code, which includes specific requirements for access and facilities for people with disabilities, such as accessible routes and accessible toilet facilities.
It can be challenging to ensure that any provisions designed to keep children safe and inside a premise do not restrict access for people who have a disability, particularly for wheelchair users. This is because many children can reach up to 1200mm, the recommended maximum height for door handles for use by people with disabilities.
One way to ensure children’s safety while providing access for people with disabilities is to use a child-resistant door or gate which allows children and people with disabilities to enter but prevents children from exiting unassisted. People with disabilities may, depending on their disability, need to ask for some assistance to exit the centre.
The Department considered this situation in Determination 2008/116, which contained “A suggested solution”. The full determination can be viewed here.
Adequate privacy for children using toilets
Both the Building Code and the Licensing Criteria for ECE centres require a measure of privacy for children. The Building Code requires ‘appropriate privacy’ and the Licensing Criteria require at least one of the toilets for children’s use to have ‘some sense of privacy’ for children; this does not override the need for supervision.
Neither authority specifies how privacy should be achieved. The Licensing Criteria also specify that toilets should be designed to allow children capable of independent toileting to access them safely without adult help.
Some BCAs interpret ‘appropriate privacy’ as a requirement for doors. Although doors provide a sense of privacy, they do not always enable supervision or safe independent access in the ECE setting; appropriate privacy can be provided in other ways.
The G1 Compliance Document is based on providing sanitary facilities for people to use unsupervised and unaided. The provisions of sanitary facilities where supervision is required, such as in ECE centres, is not covered by G1/AS1.
Children’s toilet facilities in ECE centres, which comply with the Building Code clause G1 Personal Hygiene and Education (Early Childhood Services) Regulations 2008, may provide appropriate privacy in the following ways (this list is not exhaustive):
- a high-level window for discrete supervision
- partition between sanitary fixtures of 1100 to 1200mm high
- half-height toilet doors.
Upgrading requirements
The Act requires that new building work meet the Building Code’s current requirements. When a building is altered (alteration of an existing centre), or has a change of use (eg, from a house to a new centre), the Act requires upgrading to existing parts of the building.
Upgrading requirements for alteration in s112 of the Act are; means of escape from fire, and access and facilities for people with disabilities. In other respects the building must comply with the Building Code to the same extent as before the alteration.
Upgrading requirements for change of use in s115 of the Act are; means of escape from fire, protection of other property, sanitary facilities, structural performance, fire rating performance, and access and facilities for people with disabilities. In other respects the building must comply with the Building Code to the same extent as before the alteration.
BCAs will usually ask for a report describing the existing building’s features and what upgrading is required to comply with the Building Code. The BCA will use these reports when evaluating what upgrading they consider to be necessary for an alteration or change of use to ensure the building complies with Building Code requirements ‘as nearly as is reasonably practicable’.
The ‘as nearly as is reasonably practicable’ approach balances the practicality, including costs, of requiring work to be done against the benefits to be gained. For example, a fire detection and warning system is relatively easy to retrofit into an existing building and the benefits from installing such a system would outweigh the costs.
The Department recommends that the ECE centre owner or developer consults an architect, engineer or other building professional at the feasibility stage of the project to gain an understanding of the upgrading obligations under the Building Act.