How to use the guide

This guide is divided into four main parts: ‘Safety’, ‘Health and housing’, ‘Healthy communities’ and ‘Managing houses for safety and health’. Within the four parts, priority is given to life threatening safety issues followed by the nine Healthy Living Practices. The reason the guide is set out like this is assist decision making about spending priorities on housing design, construction and maintenance to achieve better health outcomes.

Part A Safety

Part A identifies life threatening dangers that are the highest priority when designing, upgrading or maintaining a house, or designing and maintaining community infrastructure.

Important safety issues in houses include:

• electrical safety, to avoid electrocution
• fire prevention, detection, and means of escape in the event of a fire
• gas leaks, explosions or severe breathing difficulties
• structural collapse.

At a community level safety issues include:

• electrocution through faults in the main electrical distribution system
• contaminated water supply, for example high levels of bacterial organisms from faeces
• waste water system failures that lead to people being exposed to contaminated waste water.

Part B Health and Housing

Part B provides information on the health hardware required to ensure the nine Healthy Living Practices are taken into account when designing, upgrading or maintaining a house. In order of importance, these practices are:

• the ability to wash people, particularly children
• the ability to wash clothes and bedding
• removing waste safely from the house and immediate living environment
• improving nutrition: the ability to store, prepare and cook food
• reducing the negative effects of crowding
• reducing the negative contact between people and animals, insects and vermin
• reducing dust
• controlling the temperature of the living environment
• reducing trauma, or minor injury, by removing hazards.

Part C Healthy Communities

Part C discusses community planning and essential services. If these are not working properly then the health hardware in houses will be less effective.

Topics covered in the healthy communities section include:

• water
• energy/power supply
• waste water
• solid waste
• community planning
• landscaping and dust control.

NOTE: Parts A, B and C of the guide include design ideas, a checklist to improve the quality of construction, and tips for maintenance.

• In each DESIGN AND SPECIFICATION section, the word ‘ensure’ is used to describe design features that are vital for safety and health; and ‘consider’ is used to describe features that could make the house function well, make it more comfortable for residents, and less expensive to run, but these features are not so vital. Adopting as many of the design ideas as possible increases the potential to deliver safe and healthy housing.
  
  
• Each QUALITY CONTROL section relates to housing construction. Necessary inspections, tests and warranties are listed. The word ‘check’ is used to describe visual checks and simple tests that can be undertaken by non-trades and community staff. The work ‘trade test’ is used to describe tests that need to be undertaken by a licensed trade person.
  
  
• The MAINTENANCE section describes maintenance activities that will make sure the house continues to function in a safe and healthy way. Again the words ‘check’ and ‘test’ are used. ‘Repair’ is also used to describe maintenance jobs that can be undertaken by community staff without trades training, and ‘trade fix’ is used to describe jobs that will require a licensed tradesperson.

 

Part D Managing Houses for Safety and Health

Part D includes information about routine maintenance required to keep houses safe and healthy. It provides advice about simple steps that communities can take to set up a housing management system and checklists for community and trade fix.

The guide also has three appendices. Appendix 1: ‘Housing for health methodology’ outlines this approach to assessing and fixing Indigenous housing. Appendix 2 ‘Issues to consider in the design and construction of houses’ covers consultation and socio-cultural factors, universal access and managing the construction process. Appendix 3: ‘Using this guide with reference to the Building Code of Australia, Australian Standards and other relevant guidelines’ provides an easy way to look up a range of national standards about a particular item of health hardware.

The ‘Useful resources and references’ section includes details of the publications and resources about Indigenous housing design, construction, maintenance and other issues.

Following the references is an alphabetical index.

A glossary appears at the end of the guide. The glossary explains technical terms, commonly used words, and shortened forms used in the guide.

Important points to remember

This guide is best used throughout housing design, construction and maintenance processes as both a resource and a checklist. Supporting data, references, resources and technical information are provided throughout the guide. As well as the technical information, to achieve the best possible housing outcomes, it is essential that Indigenous community members be consulted about their local knowledge and specific needs.

Extent and quality of available information available

Symbols are used to indicate the level of information available and research undertaken about each topic in the guide. For example:

Indicates this may be an emerging issue that needs attention, and that little research has been done.

Means the issue is well described, occurs commonly, and that extensive, reliable research has been done.

Building codes and standards
All Australian governments aim to provide buildings that ensure safety and health.  State and territory governments have their own legislation and regulations to achieve this goal. The Building Code of Australia (BCA) and Australian Standards (AS) give detailed information about these requirements. The following table sets out this regulatory system and shows the position of the guide in relation to these codes, standards or guidelines.

 

Codes, standards or guidelines	Scope
State and Territory Building Acts and Regulations	Administrative matters and powers
The Building Code of Australia	Technical requirements for health and safety
Australian Standards4	Technical and business standards
State and territory housing and environmental health standards and guidelines	State and regional specific guidelines
The National Indigenous Housing Guide	Safety and health prioritised design, construction and maintenance guidelines

The guide has been developed to complement the Building Code of Australia, Australian Standards, state and territory building standards, state and territory environmental health, building and planning legislation and local government building regulations. The guide does not over-ride national or state/territory government codes, standards or guidelines and does not include all the requirements of other relevant codes and standards, as these also need to be considered. Appendix 3 ‘Using this guide with reference to the Building Code of Australia, Australian Standards and other relevant guidelines’ can assist with this task.

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