Direction to Fix: the free power most homeowners never use
The Building and Plumbing Commission has just published its enforcement figures for 2025/26. The headline is $2.12 million in penalties. The number that matters more to anyone currently building is buried further down: the Direction to Fix power was used 71 times, against 12 the year before. It forces a builder to repair non-compliant work while the job is still running, and the Act makes it an offence for the builder to send you the bill for doing so.
01What the figures actually show
Published 13 August 2026. Victoria only.
The Commission's own summary leads with the money, and most coverage will stop there:
“A record $2.12 million in penalties was also handed out, a 55% increase on last year and more than double the number from 2 years ago.”
Those numbers describe what the regulator did to builders. They do not tell a homeowner anything they can act on. This sentence, further down the same release, does:
“The Direction to Fix power, which comes at no cost to consumers, was used 71 times compared to 12 last year.”
One clarification before going further, because the figure is easy to misread. The 71 refers to the Commission's own use of the power. Relevant building surveyors issue their own Directions to Fix as part of ordinary inspections, and the release does not count those. So 71 is not the total number issued in Victoria. It is the number issued by the regulator, and it is the line that moved.
02What a Direction to Fix actually is
An order to repair non-compliant work, given while the work is still going on.
Two people can give one. The building surveyor on your job, and an authorised person from the Commission. The wording differs in a way that matters.
“This section applies if, after the inspection of building work, the relevant building surveyor believes on reasonable grounds that the building work fails to comply with this Act, the building regulations or the building permit issued in relation to the building work … The relevant building surveyor must give a direction to fix the building work to a relevant person in accordance with this Division.”
“This section applies if, after the inspection of building work, an authorised person believes on reasonable grounds that the building work fails to comply … The authorised person may give a direction to fix the building work to a relevant person in accordance with this Division.”
The threshold is lower than people assume. It is not proof, and the Commission's own practice note says so directly:
“‘Reasonable grounds’ refers to whether the facts available would satisfy a reasonable person that the building work is non-compliant. It does not require the satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt of the non-compliance.”
A direction can be oral or written. An oral one expects compliance within seven days, and if that does not happen it escalates to a written direction, which carries penalties. The written version has to tell the builder two things: that they can appeal to the Building Appeals Board, and that they can ask for more time. Remember that appeal right, because section 07 is what happened when somebody used it.
03Your builder must fix it, and cannot charge you for it
This is the part that is not in any news coverage, because it is in the Act rather than the media release.
The Commission describes the power as one that “comes at no cost to consumers”. That reads like a policy position, or a description of the regulator not charging a fee. It is neither. It is a criminal offence for the builder to bill you.
“A builder to whom a direction to fix building work is given must not request or receive from the person for whom the building work was originally carried out (or any agent of that person) any payment for or in respect of any costs arising from anything done for the purpose of complying with the direction. Penalty: 50 penalty units, in the case of a natural person; 250 penalty units, in the case of a body corporate.”
And ignoring the direction altogether carries considerably more:
“A builder must comply with a written direction to fix building work within the period for compliance specified in the direction. Penalty: 500 penalty units, in the case of a natural person; 2500 penalty units, in the case of a body corporate.”
Put those two subsections together and the position is clearer than the phrase “no cost to consumers” suggests. The builder has to do the work, has to do it inside the period specified, and cannot ask you for a cent towards it.
04It can also stop the job
The part almost nobody knows is in there.
A direction “may require the relevant person to do all or any of the following”, and the section then lists two. Paragraph (a): “carry out work so that the building work complies wholly or substantially with this Act, the building regulations and the building permit issued in relation to the building work”. Paragraph (b): “stop any further building work that may prevent the building work to which the direction applies from being adequately inspected, until the relevant building surveyor or authorised person is satisfied that a requirement under paragraph (a) has been complied with”.
That is the practical value of acting during construction rather than after it. Once plasterboard is on, once the slab is poured over, once the render goes up, the argument stops being about what is there and starts being about what somebody can prove is there. Paragraph (b) is the Act recognising exactly that problem.
05The deadline nobody mentions
The power expires, and it expires at the moment most people relax.
“A DTF can take the form of an oral direction and or a written direction. It can only be issued before the occupancy permit (OP) or certificate of final inspection (CFI).”
This is the single most useful sentence in the whole regime and it appears in a practice note written for surveyors rather than anywhere a homeowner would look. The free power that compels rectification exists only while the work is unfinished. On the day the occupancy permit issues, it is gone, and what remains is warranty, insurance and the tribunal, all of which are slower, and most of which involve arguing about who pays.
Which is a blunt argument for having the work looked at before handover rather than after it. Not because something is necessarily wrong, but because the cheapest remedy available to you has an expiry date printed on it.
06What it cannot do
Including one limit that applies directly to reports like ours.
A direction has to follow an inspection by the person giving it, or by somebody they have authorised. It cannot be built on somebody else's paperwork, and the practice note is unusually blunt about this:
“A DTF can only be given because of an inspection by them or a person the RBS has given authority to inspect (Section 37A(1), in conjunction with Section 35B). A DTF cannot be issued by relying on other sources of information, including BPC inspection reports, alone.”
So an independent report does not produce a Direction to Fix, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. What it does is different and still worth having: it tells you what to raise, in language that matches the Act, the regulations and the permit, and it tells you in time to raise it while a direction is still legally possible. The surveyor still has to inspect. You are giving them a reason to look and something specific to look at.
There is one narrower path worth knowing about, because it is in the Act:
“The relevant building surveyor may authorise a building surveyor or a building inspector whose registration under Part 11 authorises the inspection of that building work to give an oral direction to fix the building work to the relevant person on behalf of the relevant building surveyor in accordance with this Division.”
07What happens when a builder ignores one
A Kyneton new build, and a $100,000 penalty.
In June 2026 the Commission published the outcome of disciplinary action against Peter McBride, nominee director of THEBUILDCO.COM.AU Pty Ltd trading as InPlace. He was fined $100,000. This was the regulator's own disciplinary process, not a criminal prosecution, and the distinction is worth keeping straight.
The sequence is the reason it belongs here. The homeowner contracted in 2023. By late 2024 the house was still not finished, and the relevant building surveyor issued a Direction to Fix. What happened next is set out in the Commission's release:
“The 51-year-old appealed the order to the Building Appeals Board and then failed to turn up to the hearing. The order was upheld but McBride still failed to rectify the work and refused the homeowner and the architect reasonable site access.”
“The defective and non-compliant work included an uneven slab, non-compliant paving, unauthorised structural alterations, missing weepholes, damaged door frames and windows, non-compliant garage doors, mismatched brickwork and multiple plumbing defects.”
He was banned from acting as a nominee director for two years and ordered to complete two training courses. The company went into external administration soon after the disciplinary process began and is now in liquidation, and McBride has since not paid his registration fees, so he cannot carry out registered building work.
The ending is the part worth holding onto. The homeowner received a payout from the builder's Domestic Building Insurance. The system worked in the end, through insurance rather than through the builder, and it took the better part of two years from the direction being issued to the outcome being published.
08Complaints fell 21 per cent, and that needs saying carefully
It is in the release, it is presented as good news, and it is not that simple.
“Building and plumbing complaints have fallen by 21% and 10% respectively in the 2025-26 financial year, the lowest numbers in more than 5 years.”
Complaints falling while enforcement rises sharply is not self-explanatory. It could mean fewer problems. It could equally mean a machinery-of-government change that reorganised how complaints are received and counted in the same year the numbers moved. The release does not resolve it, and neither will we. What we would say is that a complaint figure measures how many people complained, which is not the same measurement as how many houses have defects, and the two are only loosely related.
The enforcement figures alongside it are unambiguous, and they are the reason to read the release: more prosecutions, more suspensions, and a rectification power being used almost six times as often.
09What to do if you think your build has a defect
While the work is still going on, which is the only time this particular remedy exists.
One thing to be clear about: none of this is Victoria-wide advice for the rest of the country. Every figure and every section number above is Victorian. If you are building elsewhere, your state has its own regulator and its own equivalent, and the state-by-state list in our guide to how to check a builder is registered is the place to start. The Court of Appeal has since confirmed how much can turn on it: in one case a builder who took part of the price in cash was ordered to repay it, and was held entitled to nothing for stages that were never complete.
10Sources
Every figure and every quotation on this page comes from one of the four documents below, each fetched and read on 15 August 2026.
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