The Code of Practice is no longer optional guidance

From 1 July 2026, the legal status of Codes of Practice in New South Wales changed – and few businesses have caught up with what that means.

Section 26A of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), inserted by the Industrial Relations and Other Legislation Amendment (Workplace Protections) Act 2025, now requires every person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) to either follow an approved Code of Practice that applies to a risk in their workplace, or prove they’re managing that risk to an equal or higher standard. The provision was introduced in October 2025, with commencement deliberately delayed until 1 July 2026 to give businesses time to prepare.

The change covers all approved Codes of Practice in NSW, roughly 30 in total – from managing falls, hazardous manual tasks and plant, through to psychosocial hazards. A regulator can now point to a gap between workplace practices and an applicable Code of Practice and, unless the business can demonstrate an equivalent or higher standard of safety, treat that gap as a breach.

What’s changed

Until now, a Code of Practice was persuasive but not decisive. Courts could treat it as evidence of what a careful business should have done, but a prosecution still had to prove a breach of the underlying safety duty. The Code supported that argument. It wasn’t the argument.

That distinction has narrowed considerably.  Falling short of the Code can now constitute a breach. A regulator no longer needs to prove harm occurred – only that the business departed from the Code without an equivalent or higher standard of safety in place.

Why this matters

A business can fall short of the Code on a physical hazard just as easily as on a psychosocial one – and the consequences under section 26A are the same either way.

Codes covering falls, hazardous manual tasks, plant and noise have always set out clear, well-established control measures. Many businesses assume they’re already compliant because the controls feel familiar – guarding, permits, PPE, noise monitoring. The risk now is complacency. If an inspector finds a gap between what’s documented and what the Code requires, harm no longer needs to have occurred for that gap to matter.

Psychosocial hazards raise a different challenge. The WHS Regulation 2025 requires a formal hierarchy of controls, with higher-order controls – redesigning work, adjusting workloads, addressing management practices – sitting above training and awareness. Psychosocial risk is also harder to evidence: a missing machine guard is visible, while a poorly managed workload or unchecked management behaviour often isn’t – until it results in a claim.

Different risk types, same exposure: treating either category of Code as background reading rather than an operating standard now carries materially more legal risk than it did a year ago.

What this means in practice

This change has been in effect since July 1. Check that these three things are in place:

1. Controls are mapped to the relevant Code, not just referenced by it. A policy that mentions a Code isn’t the same as a risk management system built against it. Inspectors will expect to see how hazards were identified and why the chosen controls were considered proportionate.
2. The hierarchy of controls has been applied. For physical hazards, elimination and engineering controls take priority over PPE. For psychosocial hazards, work design and management practices take priority over training. Neither can be skipped to the bottom of the list.
3. Review cycles are documented. A control implemented once and never revisited won’t hold up, whether it’s a guarding solution installed years ago or a psychosocial risk assessment done before a restructure.

The bigger picture

This change means the code of practice is now a compliance benchmark, not a suggestion. Businesses with genuinely embedded risk management, physical and psychosocial alike, have little to fear from it. Those still treating the Code as a reference document now carry more legal exposure than they did a year ago.

Citation Safety can help

Navigating these changes is a lot to manage on top of running a business. Citation Safety gives businesses the tools, advice and support to build genuine, demonstrable safety practices – not just paperwork that looks good until an inspector arrives.

From WHS audits and gap assessments through to our digital WHS Software platform and around-the-clock Safety Advice Line, we can help businesses identify where they stand against The Code of Practice.

If your business operates in a high-risk sector, or you’re simply not sure where the gaps are, get in touch with our team for a confidential conversation about what needs to happen next.