Bathla hit with 300 safety breaches in the five years before collapse

Embattled developer Bathla Group was slapped with more than 300 notices by SafeWork NSW relating to safety issues in the five years leading up to its collapse.

Since January 2021, the state’s workplace health and safety regulator has issued 306 warnings, including improvement, prohibition and penalty notices, to the group and its related subsidiaries. Fifty-nine of those notices were given in the past 18 months.

“The five most common notices were related to falls from heights, electrical hazards, construction site security, general workplace management and falling objects,” a SafeWork NSW spokesperson said.

“SafeWork NSW continues to work with the business to monitor its progress in taking any required compliance actions.”

The company was fined $135,000 by SafeWork NSW in 2018, having expressed remorse after a surveyor’s assistant was seriously injured when he fell four metres and became impaled on concrete bars at a construction site in Doonside.

It’s been a difficult few weeks for the major developer and its 542 entities, which entered voluntary administration on August 25. In the days that followed, the state’s building regulator ordered the developer to fix serious defects at an apartment building in Seven Hills and an under-construction development at Kembla Grange in the Illawarra.

Two weeks ago, administrator Teneo stood down 213 of the company’s staff and announced construction on many of its projects would come to a halt. It also secured short-term funding to allow the company to continue to operate, but only for another two weeks.

While six lenders are providing additional funding, Teneo is continuing talks with additional lenders who may be interested in participating.

Preliminary figures provided at the first creditors’ meeting show Bathla’s debts include $3.08 billion to lenders, $145 million to the Australian Tax Office, $130 million to other unsecured creditors and $42 million in land tax. The company also owes $4 million to its employees.

On Friday, the company received a lifeline after it secured a 12-month extension from the NSW Supreme Court to finalise construction projects. However, the extension of the convening period depends on the administrator securing additional funds from lenders.

“Locking in this funding is therefore an immediate priority and discussions are continuing,” Teneo’s Stephen Longely said.

Construction insolvencies have jumped 179 per cent from July to August off the back of Bathla Group’s collapse, according to CreditorWatch.

“When we sit here now and we think about the pressures going forward ... house prices have been falling, interest rates are going up, materials costs have been quite high,” CreditorWatch’s chief economist Ivan Colhoun said.

“It suggests that it will be a sector that is seeing higher insolvencies in the next 12 to 18 months.”