Urgent repair orders have been issued for “prestigious” new apartments in Sydney. 

Sydney's Lachlan’s Line apartment complex has come under scrutiny as the New South Wales Building Commission issued urgent rectification orders to Greenland Group, the developer behind the initiative. 

Located at 23 Halifax Street, Macquarie Park, the “prestigious new community” comprises 900 apartments spread across four blocks, where it has been discovered that the basement floors are at significant risk of collapse due to structural defects.

The defect, identified by the NSW Building Commission, lies within the development's concrete slab, which has been found inadequate to support the loads of the car park and ground floor, though it has been clarified that the apartments themselves are not at risk. 

“This is a defect in a building product or building element that causes or is likely to cause the basement slab to fail, namely, to fracture and collapse, leading to the destruction of the building or any part, or the threat of collapse of the building or any part,” says Matt Press, the acting assistant building commissioner.

In response, Greenland Group has been granted a timeline of two months to carry out comprehensive scans of the concrete slabs and to procure an engineering report. 

Following this, the developer is expected to rectify the defects within eight months.

This development has sparked reactions across the board, with Karen Stiles, executive director of the Owners Corporation Network, expressing satisfaction over the increased accountability for developers concerning serious defects. 

“If this had been happening for the past 20 years we wouldn’t have had such a litany of owners evacuated and financially destroyed,” she said. 

David Chandler, the Building Commissioner, has used this incident to highlight the broader issues within the state's property development sector, warning of the risks associated with up to 20 per cent of developers. 

Despite the urgent nature of the rectification orders, the Building Commission says there is “no danger” to the residents of Lachlan’s Line, attributing the defects solely to concerns regarding the “long-term durability of the basement levels of the building only”.