Issued an Improvement or Prohibition Notice? The Clock Is Already Running

A SafeWork SA inspector has been on site. Before they left, they handed you a notice, or one arrived shortly after. It’s on official letterhead, it has a due date, and somewhere on the back is a penalty figure with a lot of zeroes.

 

Most businesses do one of two things at this point. They panic, or they file it in the “deal with it later” pile. Both are the wrong move, and for the same reason: a statutory notice is not a warning letter. It is a legal instruction with a deadline attached, and the outcome you get depends almost entirely on how fast and how well you respond.

 

The short answer: an improvement notice says fix it by this date. A prohibition notice says stop until it’s fixed. A non-disturbance notice says don’t touch anything, we’re investigating. All three have clocks attached, and every option you have narrows the longer you sit on them.

 

The three notices, in plain English

 

If we can’t explain something so a fourteen-year-old could follow it, we haven’t done our job. So here it is, plainly.

 

An Improvement Notice says: you’re doing something wrong, and you need to fix it by this date. An inspector issues one when they identify that you’re contravening the WHS Act, or have done so in a way that could happen again. It will spell out the problem, and it will give you a due date to put it right. It’s usually discussed with you first, and it doesn’t come with an on-the-spot fine. But if you miss that due date, the maximum penalty is $250,000 for a company or $50,000 for an individual.

 

A Prohibition Notice says: stop, this is dangerous, and it doesn’t happen again until it’s fixed. These are the serious ones. An inspector issues a prohibition notice when they identify an immediate or imminent serious risk to someone’s health or safety. It directs you to cease an activity, or stop using a piece of plant, then and there. It stays in force until the risk is properly addressed: there’s no due date to work toward, because the activity simply cannot continue until an inspector is satisfied it’s safe. Miss the mark here and the maximum penalty is $500,000 for a company or $100,000 for an individual. One detail that catches people out: a prohibition notice can continue to apply to the affected plant or equipment even if you remove it from site or sell it. You can’t make the problem someone else’s by moving it on.

 

A Non-Disturbance Notice says: don’t touch anything, we’re investigating. This one usually follows a serious incident. It requires you to preserve a site, or a specific item, piece of plant, substance or structure, so an inspector can investigate without the scene being altered. It runs for a set period (up to seven days) and it spells out exactly what you must preserve. Failure to comply carries a maximum penalty of $250,000 for a company or $50,000 for an individual.

 

And there’s a fourth worth knowing about, because it tells you something important. Inspectors can also issue a Notice to Produce Documents, requiring you to hand over records, answer questions, or appear to give evidence. Which brings us to the point most businesses miss entirely.

 

One notice is rarely just one notice

 

An inspector who is standing in your workplace has the full authority of the WHS Act behind them. They came for one thing, but they don’t have to leave once they’ve dealt with it. If they see a second issue, they can act on the second issue. If your test-and-tag is out of date, they’ll notice the blocked emergency exit too. If your SDS register is a mess, they may well ask what else is being managed the same way.

 

A single notice is very often a symptom, not the disease. It’s a signal that a system somewhere has a gap, and gaps rarely exist in isolation. That’s why the businesses that come out of this well don’t just fix the one thing on the notice. They ask the harder question: if we were caught short here, where else are we exposed? And they answer it before the inspector comes back. You want to be the one asking that question. Not the inspector.

 

What a notice actually costs you

 

The penalty figures are real, and they’re large. But for most businesses, the fine is not the biggest cost.

 

• Stopped work. A prohibition notice halts an activity until the risk is resolved. Every hour that line, that machine, that job is stopped is production you’re not getting back, and there is no clock you can wait out. The only way to restart is to fix it properly and satisfy an inspector. The slower and messier your response, the longer you’re bleeding.
• It goes on the wall. Improvement and prohibition notices must be displayed prominently at or near the workplace. That means your staff see it. Your visitors see it. Your clients, if they’re on site, see it. A notice is a quietly public statement that something went wrong here, and how long it stays up is entirely down to how quickly you resolve it.
• Your record. Notices form part of your compliance history. That history follows you into tenders, into contract renewals, into insurance conversations and into any future dealings with the regulator.
• The next inspection. Regulators remember. A business that resolved a notice quickly and thoroughly is treated very differently to one that had to be chased.

 

The clock is already running

 

This is the part that costs businesses the most, and it’s entirely avoidable. Every notice has a timeline, and the timeline is not on your side by default. An improvement notice has a firm due date. Miss it, and you’re exposed to the full penalty; “we were getting to it” is not a defence. You can apply for an extension of time, and in the right circumstances you can seek a review: an improvement notice is automatically paused while a review is underway. But prohibition and non-disturbance notices are not automatically paused; if you want that, you have to request it correctly and on time. These are not things to work out on day six.

 

The pattern is always the same: the earlier you act, the better and faster the outcome. Act on day one and you have room to fix the root cause properly, gather your evidence, request an extension or review if it’s warranted, and get re-inspected quickly. Sit on it for a week and every one of those options narrows. Deadlines get missed not because businesses don’t care, but because nobody was tracking the due date and driving toward it.

 

Fixing it fast is not the same as fixing it right

 

There’s a temptation, especially under a deadline, to do the minimum that makes the notice go away. Patch the specific thing the inspector pointed at, tick the box, move on. That’s how businesses end up with a second notice for the same underlying failure a few months later.

 

Clearing a notice properly means two things. First, remedy the actual contravention by the due date: cleanly, with evidence, in a way that stands up when an inspector looks again. Second, fix the cause, so it doesn’t reappear. A frayed lead is a symptom; the absence of a testing schedule is the cause. A blocked exit is a symptom; the absence of a real inspection routine is the cause. Deal only with the symptom and you’ve bought yourself a few months. Deal with the cause and you’ve actually solved it. Done well, a notice becomes the thing that made your business genuinely safer and more defensible, instead of the first in a series.

 

Preventing the next one

 

The best notice is the one you never receive. Prevention isn’t complicated, but it does have to be real, not a folder of documents nobody has ever read. It comes down to a few things working together: knowing your actual obligations under the Act and the relevant Codes of Practice; having live systems for the high-risk areas that generate most notices (electrical testing and tagging, fire and emergency equipment, exit and emergency lighting, first aid, plant and hazardous substances); scheduling inspections and maintenance before things fall due rather than after; and (the one most businesses skip) making sure the people on the floor actually understand the systems, because a system nobody has been inducted into doesn’t really exist. That last point is where compliance stops being paperwork and starts being protection.

 

Frequently asked questions

 

 

Where WLSS fits

 

When a notice lands, the instinct is to sort it internally and only bring someone in if it gets worse. Reverse that. The businesses that come out ahead make the call on day one, because on day one, every option is still open.

 

WLSS moves fast and clears notices properly: we know what an inspector needs to see to be satisfied, and we know the difference between a fix that holds and one that invites a repeat. We manage the clock (due dates, extension requests, review timeframes, re-inspection) so a missed deadline never becomes the reason a penalty applies. And because one issue is rarely the only issue, we look wider than the notice, helping you find the other gaps before the inspector’s next visit and building the systems that stop them recurring, from emergency planning to the full spread of our WHS compliance services. We don’t dump a document set and leave; we implement it, induct your people into it, and make it something they actually use.

 

If a notice has landed, or you’d rather make sure one never does, talk to us early. The sooner we’re in, the faster and cleaner the outcome.

 

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