The NSW Fair Trading Complaints Register — and what it hides
Short answer
No. The NSW Fair Trading Complaints Register only lists a business once it receives 10 or more complaints in a single calendar month. A builder can have a long trail of individual complaints, disciplinary findings, or an insolvency history and never appear on it. Treat an empty result as "not high-volume this month", not "clean".
The Complaints Register is often described as the place to check whether a builder is trouble. It is useful, but its design means most problem builders are invisible on it.
What the register actually is
NSW Fair Trading publishes a Complaints Register of businesses that received 10 or more complaints in a single calendar month. It is a high-water mark for consumer noise — a signal that a lot of people complained about one business at once.
Why most problem builders never appear
The threshold is the catch. A builder can generate a steady stream of complaints — one or two a month, for years — and never once hit ten in a single month. Residential builders are also lower-volume than, say, a phone retailer, so even a genuinely bad builder rarely produces ten complaints in thirty days. The register is built for volume, not for the slow-burn disputes that define most building problems.
What it does not show at all
The Complaints Register is silent on the records that matter most before you sign:
- Disciplinary findings. Formal actions by Fair Trading against a licence holder are a separate record.
- Rectification orders. NSW Building Commission orders to fix defective work are not on the Complaints Register.
- Insolvency. Whether the company behind the licence is in external administration or has been deregistered by ASIC.
- Removed records. Listings that were once public and have since been taken down upstream. In BuilderVet’s own longitudinal archive, 23 disciplinary records that were later removed from public listings are still preserved with their original source and dates — history that vanishes from the live registers but not from ours.
What to check instead
Before signing, check the licence register for current status, ASIC for insolvency, and disciplinary history — each is a different register. BuilderVet joins all of them into one profile per builder, including records deleted upstream, so the picture doesn’t depend on a business happening to cross a monthly complaints threshold. Start at the builder directory.
Related questions
- How many complaints does it take to appear on the register?
- A business appears when NSW Fair Trading receives 10 or more complaints about it within one calendar month. Fewer than that in any month — even dozens spread across a year — and it never gets listed.
- If a builder isn't on the Complaints Register, are they safe?
- No. Absence only means they did not cross the monthly threshold. Check the licence register, ASIC insolvency notices, and disciplinary history separately — those capture problems the Complaints Register never will.
Updated 13 July 2026