De-cladding victoria: Andrews Government announces new agency to address the combustible cladding crisis By Jane Hider, Emily Steiner & Samuel Woff On 16 July 2019, the Andrews Victorian State Government announced that it will establish a new, world-first agency to address the cladding crisis that has swept the Victorian construction industry over at least the past five years. The new agency, Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV), will have access to a A$600 million package from the State Government to fund rectification works on private residential buildings across the State which have been clad with combustible materials and are classified as ‘high-risk’. The State Government has committed to directly fund half of this A$600 million package, and plans to introduce changes to the building permit levy to raise the remaining A$300 million over the next five years. It is proposed that CSV will work with affected owners’ corporations from start to finish. Specific details of the proposed structure and operating methodology for this new agency are yet to be released. However, as the announcement of CSV’s establishment coincided with the delivery of the Victorian Cladding Taskforce’s Final Report, it is unsurprising that the establishment of this agency was one of the Taskforce’s key recommendations. We expect that CSV’s structure and operating methodology will be largely informed by the Taskforce’s recommendations,1 which suggest the agency should, or could, take the following form: purpose to support owners and occupants through the rectification process functions • Provide funding for rectification works. • Provide project management support. • Ensure proposed solutions are carried out in a timely and effective manner to bring buildings to an acceptable level of risk. • Educate owners about how to mitigate fire risks until the cladding on their buildings is rectified. approach/methodology • Adopt a risk-based approach to prioritising buildings for rectification funding – higher-risk buildings eligible for earlier funding and rectification. • Require private owners to transfer their legal recovery rights to CSV as a condition of receiving funding, to allow the State to seek to recover rectification costs from responsible parties.