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Pest control Inner West
Guide 2 of 5

A school or childcare centre next door

On streets where a terrace can share a wall with a school hall, the notice rule changes direction: it goes to the people who run the place next door, not to the households in the row.

General information from the official sources named on this page, not legal advice.

One Inner West street drawn as an elevation: a run of separate houses, a run of terraces and semis, a block of flats, a short gap, and past it a school gate. Each run carries the notice rule that applies to its homes, set into the footpath beneath it, and each mark opens a guide. The back gardens Separate houses Terraces and semis Flats and units The school gatenot a dwelling, not to scale The five working days rule for unit blocks does not apply to single houses or duplexes. The licence still applies, and a copy of any notice or record is kept. The licence still applies, and a copy of any notice or record is kept. Ask the NSW EPA on 131 555 whetheryour row counts. Five working days notice before the common areas of a multiple-occupancy residential complex are treated. Complexes take in units, flats, townhouses or villas, at three or more residences. Notice goes to the person who runs the school, at least 5 working days before certain pesticides are used outside next door. A hospital is not owed this notice. inspectionWhat a building inspection report will not say about termites
The same Inner West street stood on end: a band of separate houses, a band of terraces and semis, a band of flats, each as tall as its share of the Inner West's homes, and a short final band for the school gate. Each band carries its own notice rule. Separate houses 28.8% of homes Terraces and semis 27.1% of homes Flats and units 42.4% of homes The school gate not a dwelling, not to scale Notice goes to the person who runs the school, at least 5 working days before certain pesticides are used outside next door. The back gardens, and the animals the council names
The same Inner West street, drawn as an elevation: a run of separate houses, a run of terraces and semis, a block of flats, then a short gap and a school gate. Each run carries the notice rule that applies to its homes, this guide's mark is the one lit, and every mark opens a guide. Widths follow the 2021 Census count of the Inner West's occupied private dwellings: 28.8% separate houses, 27.1% semi-detached, row or terrace houses and townhouses, 42.4% flats or apartments; the 1.5% other dwellings are not drawn (ABS QuickStats, Inner West). Source: abs.gov.au © Commonwealth of Australia.

What the rule says

The EPA's own summary is the plainest place to start. Where technicians use certain pesticides outdoors beside a sensitive place, and the page's examples are a nursing home and a school, the person who answers for that place has to be told five working days before the pesticide is applied.

The regulation behind that summary is more exact about who is told and how far the duty reaches. Fumigation work and pest management technician work carry a duty: a pesticide use notice has to be given no fewer than 5 working days before a pesticide is sprayed outdoors, or injected into the ground outdoors, within 20 metres of a sensitive place. It goes to whoever manages the sensitive place, or to an agent of that person. Hospitals are named in the same sentence as the exception.

There is one defence written into it, and it turns on knowledge rather than distance: a person is not guilty under that clause if the place where the pesticide was to be used could not reasonably have been known to sit within 20 metres of a sensitive place.

Notification of this kind is not a council by-law or a local arrangement. The regulator behind it is the EPA, and its basis is Part 5 of the Pesticides Regulation 2017.

What counts as a sensitive place

The regulation's definition begins with the places a parent would expect it to begin with. A sensitive place means, among other things, a school, a pre-school, a kindergarten or a childcare centre.

The EPA's examples on its own page are a nursing home and a school, which fits the same shape: a place where the people present may not be the ones who arranged the treatment.

The reason those places are singled out is on the same page, and it is the quiet reason this guide exists: the people who spend their days there can be more sensitive to pesticides than the population at large.

The hospital, and the empty boundary

Two cases are named in the guidance as falling outside the duty. The first is a hospital: there is no requirement to give this notice where the sensitive place is a hospital. The regulation names the same exception in its own words, so this is a rule and not an oversight on a web page.

The second case is a boundary with nothing on it. Where no sensitive place shares the boundary, no notification is mandatory at all. The EPA does not leave it there: telling people anyway, where sensitive people are next door, is called good practice, and the example given is a hospital with patient areas near the treatment.

One terrace, one school hall, five working days

A worked example, built only from the rules above. A terrace house stands 15 metres from a primary school hall, on the school's boundary side. The householder books an outside treatment for a Friday.

  • The distance puts the job inside the 20 metre rule, so if the treatment sprays outdoors or injects into the ground outdoors, the notice is owed.
  • The notice goes to whoever runs the school, not to the parents and not to the neighbours.
  • Counting only working days, a notice given on the Thursday of the week before leaves five full working days before the Friday treatment.
  • The technician supplies the information the notice has to carry, and the sender does not have to verify that the notice arrived, though the EPA advises allowing extra time if it goes by post.
  • Afterwards the application is recorded within 48 hours of using the pesticide, and the record is kept for 3 years.

Nothing in the example depends on the family knowing the school's business. The duty is on the person who carries out the pest management work, not on the household.

When the treatment cannot wait

An emergency does not remove the duty to tell the school, it changes its timing. Where a pesticide has to be used to deal with an emergency, the five working days are not owed, and notification is still to be provided before the job is undertaken. The EPA's own examples of an emergency are infestations of biting or dangerous pests: wasps, bees, venomous spiders, rodents and bird mites.

Away from emergencies, the same EPA page has a gentler instruction that fits a school gate better than a rule does. Even where no notice is required, the EPA calls it good practice to let the people who run nearby sensitive places know, naming hospitals, schools and childcare centres among them, so the area can be avoided or parents and patients can be advised.

What the rule is backed by

What is here is the distance, the days, the person to tell, the two exceptions, the emergency and the record.

The EPA's page also sets out the price of getting it wrong: on-the-spot fines of $800 for a corporation or $400 for an individual, and fines of up to $44,000 imposed by a court for more serious offences. A school on the other side of a fence is the case those figures are there to protect.

The guide to who is told on the rest of the street sets this rule beside the five day notice for a block of flats, and the guide to emergencies and small jobs takes the emergency case through both of the EPA's pages on it.