Pool safety signs for retirement villages and community pools

Western Australia: the duty starts at 30 lots

Western Australia is the only jurisdiction with a mandatory resuscitation notice for shared and commercial pools, and it sits in health law. The Health (Aquatic Facilities) Regulations 2007, regulation 19(2), adopt the Department of Health Code of practice for aquatic facilities. Clause 2.25.1.4, headed "Mandatory signage", requires one or more resuscitation notices in a prominent position, easily seen by pool users and adjacent to the first aid area, kept current with the Resuscitation Council of Australia's recommended CPR procedure. Residential developments are among the categories covered.

Regulation 5(2) excludes strata schemes with fewer than 30 residential lots. For a village that is a strata scheme, 30 lots is the line. Below it the regulations do not reach you. At or above it, the resuscitation notice is mandatory rather than advisable, and penalties run from $100 to $1,000 for a first offence, minimum $500 for a third, with up to $100 a day for a continuing offence.

The Code specifies placement and currency only, with no size, material or wording for the resuscitation notice. It separately mandates "NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY" and "NO USE OF FACILITY ALLOWED AFTER DARK" signs at 100mm lettering, which we do not make. The full split is on our Western Australia page.

South Australia: the duty can arrive at a settlement

South Australia is the other threshold, and it is a date rather than a count. The requirement comes through the state's variation to the National Construction Code, and the South Australian Government states it began on 1 May 2016, tied to the Building Code as it applied when the approval was sought.

For a pool approved before 1 July 1993, Ministerial Building Standard MBS 004 applies instead and attaches the obligation at a prescribed event rather than continuously. Transfer of a strata unit or a community lot is a prescribed event. In a retirement village, units change hands steadily, so an older pool can pick up the obligation at a settlement rather than on a date anyone has diarised. If your village has an older pool and regular turnover, this is the paragraph to take to your scheme's lawyer.

New South Wales and Queensland

New South Wales. The Swimming Pools Act 1992 applies to premises with a residential building, and section 3(1A) expressly extends it to strata common property. A shared village pool on common property is covered. Clause 10 of the Swimming Pools Regulation 2018 sets the content: a resuscitation flow chart based on ANZCOR Guideline 8 as published in January 2016, a statement that formal instruction in resuscitation is essential, the publisher's name and the date of publication, and three specific lines about supervision, gates and keeping the fence clear.

Queensland. Section 13 of the Building Regulation 2021 covers regulated pools, which include pools on residential land and at class 1, 2, 3 and 4 buildings, plus residential parks. Most village configurations fall inside that. The sign must be at least 300mm by 300mm, durable and weatherproof, attached to the barrier or displayed near the pool. One exception: class 3 common property operating under an approved pool safety management plan sits outside the definition and therefore outside the duty.

Where we found no requirement

No resuscitation signage duty was found for a shared residential pool in Victoria, Tasmania, the Northern Territory or the ACT. That finding is stronger in Victoria and Tasmania, where we searched the public health instruments as well as the building ones, than in the ACT and the Northern Territory, where we searched building law and did not search health law. Western Australia is the reason we draw that distinction: its duty is in health law while its building regulations look empty.

On legibility, and what we will not claim

The only legibility test written into any Australian pool signage instrument we read is New South Wales clause 11: the sign must be legible from at least 3 metres and maintained in that condition. There is no accessibility standard for pool signage, no minimum type size for older readers, and no contrast requirement in any of the eight jurisdictions.

What we can tell you is what the sign physically is. The panel is 350mm by 710mm, aluminium composite with a full colour digital print, and the artwork sets its instruction text in white on near-black blocks against a light ground. Earlier copy on this page described our signs as "non-glare". We have not tested that and have removed the claim rather than repeat it.

What we have not been able to close

• Council by-laws were not searched. More than five hundred councils; state and territory instruments only.
• ACT and Northern Territory health law was not searched.
• The 1 May 2016 South Australian start date is the government's own statement and could not be confirmed against code text.
• AS 1926.1 and AS 1926.2 are paywalled and could not be read to confirm they contain no signage clause.
• How a retirement village that is not a strata scheme reads against the Western Australian 30 lot exclusion. Regulation 5(2) is written in terms of residential lots, and a village held on a single title or under a village-specific tenure is not obviously the same thing.

General information about what the instruments say, not legal advice. Compiled 4 August 2026.

What to put at a village pool

The CPR sign is the resuscitation notice, and in this segment it is the product whose purpose is least theoretical. A village pool is used by residents in the age band where a cardiac event is most likely and where a bystander is most likely to be another resident. 350mm by 710mm on aluminium composite panel, seven colours including Ice White and Stone Blue.

The Pool Rules sign carries six rules: supervision, securing the gate, no running or rough play, no diving, keeping the pool area clear, and no glassware. Two of them are drawn for a family pool and read oddly at a village: the supervision rule is about children, and it is the largest panel on the sign. The gate, glassware and pool-area-clear rules are the ones that do work in a shared setting. No jurisdiction we read requires a rules sign, so this is a management choice rather than a compliance one.

If the pool has a shallow end, the standalone No Diving sign puts that rule at the water. If there is a plant room with chlorine or acid in it, the Danger Chemical Storage sign covers the part of the facility nobody thinks about until an audit.

What we do not make, and which earlier copy on this page implied we did: accessibility and mobility assistance signs, depth markers, emergency procedure signs and visitor use notices.

Panels are not pre-drilled. A free installation pack ships with every sign; the installation kit is a spare. The installation instructions cover rendered walls, timber and fencing.

For a village group or several sites, volume pricing is on the wholesale page, or ask for a quote or call 1300 005 232. If your buildings are in more than one state, tell us which, because the answer above is not the same in each.

Managing an apartment scheme rather than a village? The strata and apartment complex page covers the same instruments from that angle.