Landlord or Tenant: Who's Responsible for Fire Compliance in the NT?

If you're leasing a commercial building in Darwin, Katherine or anywhere else in the Territory, here's a question worth putting to your landlord or property manager: who is actually responsible for keeping the fire extinguishers, emergency lighting and fire panel compliant, you or them? 

It's one of the most common gaps TEC Fire finds on site, and it's rarely anyone's fault on purpose. It's just a responsibility that can fall through the cracks of a lease agreement. 

We asked Co-Director Ryan Smith to walk through who's on the hook, what the requirements actually are, and what happens when nobody owns the job. 

Whose responsibility is fire compliance in a leased building?

Under the NT Building Act 1993 and Building Regulations 1993, fire safety measures, extinguishers, emergency lighting, alarm panels, have to be kept in effective working order at all times, regardless of what the lease says. The lease doesn't decide whether servicing needs to happen. It decides who arranges it and who pays. That's often where the confusion starts. 

"We go around and knock on doors of sheds and commercial units all over Darwin, and a huge portion of business owners we speak to don't know the answer," Ryan says. "They'll say 'I'm just leasing this,' and I'll ask if their landlord is covering fire compliance. Sometimes they know. A lot of the time they've genuinely never asked." 

If the lease is silent on it, the obligation doesn't disappear, it's just unclear whose budget it comes out of. That ambiguity is where things tend to get missed. 

What are the actual requirements, regardless of who pays?

AS 1851 sets the routine service intervals. Fire extinguishers get a six-monthly service, with a more thorough inspection at the five-year mark. Fire panels need a monthly check, plus a full functional test annually. Emergency lighting runs on its own schedule under AS/NZS 2293, a monthly function test, a more thorough six-monthly test, and an annual inspection of the fittings themselves. 

None of these are landlord-only or tenant-only obligations. They apply to whoever occupies and operates the building, commercial or industrial. 

What happens if it's never resolved between landlord and tenant?

In the short term, usually nothing, which is part of the problem. But a fire extinguisher that's never been checked, or emergency lighting that fails during a real evacuation, won't wait on who was meant to arrange the service. Under NT law the obligation sits with the building, so if something does go wrong, that's where WorkSafe and the NT Fire and Rescue Service will start looking, rather than at who missed having the conversation. 

There's also an insurance angle worth being upfront about. Insurers generally expect fire protection equipment to meet the relevant standards, and non-compliance can be grounds for a claim to be reduced or knocked back after an incident. Worth checking your policy wording rather than assuming you're covered. 

What should tenants be asking before they sign, or right now if they're already in a lease?

Two questions: is fire compliance servicing included in the lease, and if not, has anyone actually organised it. "It's a five-minute conversation that saves a world of pain," Ryan says. "We'd rather a tenant call us and ask 'has this ever been done here' than find out the hard way during an inspection or, worse, an actual fire." 

For landlords with multiple tenancies, especially sheds, warehouses and multi-tenant commercial buildings, it's worth having one compliance schedule across the whole site rather than leaving it to individual tenants to sort out separately. It's more consistent, and it means the landlord has a clear compliance record if WorkSafe or the fire service ever asks. 

What does TEC do when this gap turns up on site?

We flag it. If we're servicing one tenancy in a building and notice the rest of the site has no record of fire protection maintenance, we'll raise it with whoever we're speaking to and explain what's actually required. It's not about scaring people, it's about making sure someone in the building actually owns the responsibility before it becomes a bigger problem. 

Why does this matter more in the Territory?

Commercial leasing in Darwin and regional NT often involves smaller landlords, owner-operators and shed-style tenancies that don't have the same property management structure larger interstate portfolios do. That means there's more chance of fire compliance sitting in a grey area between landlord and tenant, and fewer layers to catch it if it's missed. 

The bottom line

Whoever owns the building, whoever leases it, someone needs to be responsible for arranging fire compliance servicing, because the requirement itself doesn't go away no matter what the lease says. Three things worth doing this week if you're not sure where your site stands: 

• Check whether fire compliance servicing is actually named in your lease 

• Ask for copies of the last service and test records, extinguishers, panel, emergency lighting 

• Get whatever arrangement you land on in writing, so there's no confusion next time an inspection comes around 

If you're not sure who's responsible for your site, that's the first thing to sort out, before an inspection raises the question for you. 

 Fire compliance for leased sites often runs alongside broader building upkeep. See our Preventative & Corrective Maintenance services for scheduled electrical maintenance across the same buildings. 

Not sure whether fire compliance sits with you or your landlord? Call Ryan directly or speak to one of TEC Fire’s compliance experts, no obligation. We service Darwin, Katherine, Tennant Creek and remote Northern Territory locations. 

Phone: (08) 8968 9484 | Email Ryan: info@tecfire.com.au