What NSW actually requires for smoke alarms
Every residential property in NSW, rented or owner-occupied, needs at least one working smoke alarm on each level. That's the baseline, and it applies regardless of the property's age.
Where it gets more specific: if your rental was built, or substantially renovated with a development application, after 1 May 2014, and it has more than one smoke alarm, those alarms must be hardwired and interconnected. That means when one alarm detects smoke, every alarm in the property sounds, not just the one nearest the fire. Older properties that haven't been renovated since that date can still use compliant photoelectric alarms on a 10-year non-removable battery.
Smoke alarms must meet AS 3786 and be replaced every 10 years from the manufacture date on the unit, not the install date. As a landlord or managing agent, that's a detail worth checking on properties you haven't had inspected in a while.
Safety switches are murkier, and that's exactly where landlords get caught out
Unlike Queensland, NSW doesn't have a blanket law forcing every existing rental to retrofit safety switches. That surprises a lot of landlords, because it feels like something that obviously should be mandatory.
Here's the part that actually matters. The standard NSW condition report requires the safety switch to be tested and its working status recorded at the start of every tenancy, no exceptions. All electrical work and major alterations carried out since 1992 have required RCD protection, so any property touched since then should already have one. Properties that haven't been rewired since before 1992 often don't, and that gap sits there quietly until something goes wrong.
The practical reality: a landlord with no safety switch and no record of testing one is exposed if a tenant is hurt by an electrical fault. General duty of care under the Residential Tenancies Act doesn't disappear just because there's no specific retrofit deadline.
What "urgent repair" means and why the figure matters
If a safety switch is found faulty, missing, or tripping during a tenancy, NSW Fair Trading treats that as an urgent repair. A landlord has to act within a reasonable time frame. If they don't, the tenant can arrange the repair themselves and the landlord can be billed up to $1,000 without prior approval.
That number is the one to remember. A $1,000 exposure on a repair the landlord had no say in arranging is a bad outcome for everyone, and it's entirely avoidable with a proactive check.
What a pre-tenancy electrical check should cover
A proper pre-tenancy check confirms every smoke alarm is present, powered, and within its 10 year life. It confirms the safety switch trips correctly when tested and covers every circuit, not just power points. And it flags anything else that's likely to become an urgent repair mid-lease, like an old switchboard with no spare capacity or visible wear on the meter box.
If the board is old enough that a safety switch retrofit means a full switchboard upgrade rather than a simple add-on, that's worth knowing before a tenant moves in, not after a fault trips at 9pm on a Sunday.