What are the Professional Standards Councils (Councils)?
The Councils are independent statutory decision-makers established for each State and Territory who work collectively to promote consumer protection, improve professional standards, and encourage and assist occupational associations to achieve these ends.
The Councils work together as a single body to administer professional standards legislation.
The statutory objects of professional standards legislation are:
- to facilitate the improvement of occupational standards of professionals and others, and
- to protect the consumers of the services provided by professionals and others; and
- to enable the creation of professional standards schemes to limit the civil liability of professionals and others.
Professional standards schemes are the statutory instruments by which obligations are imposed on associations and their members.
These obligations include developing and implementing:
- insurance standards to ensure all members covered by the scheme hold professional indemnity insurance that meets minimum coverage and other insurance standards
- strategies to identify and manage professional standards and consumer risks and reduce consumer harm, including continuing professional development, code of conduct and ethics
- systems to deal with complaints against members, and to determine and take disciplinary action.
If approved, a professional standards scheme limits occupational liability (with some exceptions) for members covered by a scheme to appropriate amounts, based on the nature and level of claims and the need to protect consumers.
Approved schemes currently apply across a range of professions. Current and historic scheme documents are here: https://www.psc.gov.au/professional-standards-schemes.
No. Professional standards legislation explicitly excludes protection for certain types of liability – including where wrongdoing is involved.
For example, the Professional Standards Act 1994 (NSW) (section 5) provides that the Act does not apply to limit liability for damages arising from:
- the death or personal injury of a person
- a breach of trust
- fraud or dishonesty.
In short, professional standards schemes do not ‘protect’ a person from being sued for any loss arising from an act or omission which is fraudulent, dishonest or is a breach of trust. Such acts remove a person’s protection for liability for damage arising from their conduct.
A professional standards scheme does not confer any status or standing on an occupation or an association.
A professional standards scheme is intended to assist associations which want to continuously improve the standards of their members – whether in traditional professions or other occupational groups.
Different industry associations have different levels of sophistication, resourcing and regulatory experience. A scheme can help an association to improve the standards of their members, particularly in relation to understanding ethical conduct. This process may be broadly referred to as improving professionalism or ‘professionalisation’. But this does not mean that a particular occupation has the same standing as another occupation.
The Councils do not have complaint-handling or enforcement functions in relation to complaints against individual service providers (other than notification of limitation of liability, referred to below). We cannot intervene to resolve individual complaints or disputes.
However, consumers can contact the Councils if they believe there are systemic issues with an occupational associations risk management processes (which may include complaints systems). These may assist in the Councils’ decision-making and monitoring functions.