Review of the Incident reporting and site preservation guidelines

We are reviewing the Incident reporting and site preservation guidelines and want to hear your views

In May 2024, new site preservation duties came into effect. These duties require major electricity companies and gas companies to preserve the site of incidents they report to Energy Safe Victoria in certain circumstances.

Following public consultation, we published the current guidelines and FAQs in May 2024. These are to help companies understand and comply with their site preservation duties. The guidelines also outlined:

• The types of incident sites we would typically attend before issuing a direction allowing site disturbance. For example, where there’s been a fatality, serious injury, significant property damage or major disruption.
• Our target timeframes for site attendance. This is within 4 hours in metropolitan Melbourne and 24 hours in regional Victoria.

The incident reporting requirements themselves did not change when these new duties took effect.

It has now been over a year since we published the guidelines and FAQs. With experience gained over this time, we are reviewing the guidelines to ensure remain clear, practical and effective.

We’re especially interested in your practical experience and suggestions for the guidelines. The consultation paper includes questions to help guide your submission.

DOWNLOAD THE CONSULTATION PAPER

To provide feedback on the guidelines, please email your submission to: consultation@energysafe.vic.gov.au

Submissions close Monday 8 September 2025 at 12:00 pm (noon)

We will treat submissions as public and publish them on our website unless otherwise requested. Any information that is commercially sensitive or confidential should be clearly marked. Names and other personal information will be removed from submissions before publication

All questions about the consultation process must be submitted in writing to consultation@energysafe.vic.gov.au. Questions will be deidentified and published on this web page with an official answer. This is to ensure all potential submissions have access to the same information.

Questions about the draft guidelines should be included in written submissions. These will be answered in the consultation report, which will be published.