Brooke van Velden changes lab safety rules after $1.5b compliance warning

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says changes to hazardous-substances regulations have come into effect, giving research, testing and teaching laboratories a more practical safety pathway.

The 30 July announcement says the changes are designed to maintain safety in laboratories while reducing unnecessary compliance costs. Van Velden said laboratories had been subject since 2017 to the same regulatory requirements as industrial operations using hazardous substances, even though labs generally work at smaller scale and with wider ranges of substances in lesser quantities.

The financial warning behind the change is large. Universities New Zealand and the Independent Research Association of New Zealand estimated the previous requirements were likely to cost between $1.5 billion and $3 billion if laboratories across the country had to be renovated to comply.

Van Velden also argued the old settings could, in some cases, make laboratories less safe. She gave the example of laboratories with self-reactive substances being required to be on the ground floor of buildings. Scientists told her that upper-level laboratories could make more sense from a safety perspective because otherwise ground-floor exits could be blocked by fire, preventing evacuation.

The new approach introduces a dedicated compliance pathway for research, testing and teaching laboratories under the Hazardous Substances Regulations. Rather than being treated like industrial operations such as pesticide or cleaning-product manufacturers, laboratories can meet their obligations through risk-management plans tailored to the risks of flammable and oxidising substances in their own facilities.

That distinction matters for universities, Crown research organisations, private laboratories, testing businesses and science-led startups. A rule that fits an industrial plant may be poorly designed for a teaching lab or a research facility that handles small quantities of many different substances.

The announcement is also a science-policy story. New Zealand repeatedly says it wants more innovation, commercialisation and research capability. If the regulatory environment makes ordinary laboratory upgrades prohibitively expensive, that ambition becomes harder to deliver.

An Approved Code of Practice will be developed with industry to give laboratories clear guidance on how to meet the requirements. That code will be important, because flexibility is useful only if labs, inspectors, universities and insurers understand what good compliance looks like.

There is a public-interest balance here. Laboratories need to be safe for staff, students, visitors and emergency responders. They also need rules that fit laboratory realities. The Government's argument is that the old system failed that fit and created a billion-dollar compliance risk without proportionate safety benefit.

The practical test will come as laboratories update their risk-management systems and as the new code of practice is developed. If the changes reduce unnecessary building costs while improving real hazard controls, the reform will be a useful example of regulation being made more precise.