How long must NSW cleaning employers keep workers compensation policies? 7 years

NSW cleaning employers must keep workers compensation insurance policies for 7 years under section 161(4) of the Workers Compensation Act 1987 and produce them when required under sections 161(1)–(3), according to SIRA’s Key employer obligations and penalties, updated 29 July 2026. On the same SIRA page, updated 29 July 2026, a certificate of currency must be produced within 5 days of a request; that deadline is separate from the seven-year policy-retention rule (figures checked 1 October 2026).

What does the seven-year policy rule actually require?

SIRA lists two separate policy-related duties:

• Keep the policy: Insurance policies must be kept for 7 years under section 161(4) of the Workers Compensation Act 1987.
• Produce the policy: An employer must comply with a notice to produce its insurance policy under sections 161(1)–(3).

The cited SIRA table does not state a fixed number of days for producing the full policy after that notice. It also does not identify when the seven-year retention period starts. Do not use the five-day certificate deadline to decide when a policy may be discarded.

How is that different from the five-day certificate rule?

The document, trigger and required action all matter:

The five days is the response period for producing a certificate after a request. It is not a five-day policy-retention rule, and the SIRA table does not say that a certificate can replace a requested policy.

Do wage and workplace records follow the same seven-year period?

Do not transfer the seven-year policy figure to other records without checking the specific requirement. SIRA lists separate obligations for wage information and workplace records:

The wage-information obligations are cited to section 173AA(1) and clauses 138–141. Keeping, supplying and producing wage and other records for inspection is cited to section 174 and clause 166. The injury-notification record and register of injuries are separate obligations under clause 35, and sections 63 and 256 with clause 40 respectively.

SIRA also lists other seven-day tasks that should not be confused with policy retention:

• Forward claim documents to the insurer within 7 days of receiving them from a worker.
• Provide information about a worker’s injury or claim to the insurer within 7 days of a request.

Those are forwarding and response deadlines, not instructions to keep the documents for seven years.

What should a cleaning employer do with these records?

A practical checklist is:

1. Keep each workers compensation policy under a dedicated 7-year retention control.
2. Record certificate-of-currency requests separately and respond within 5 days of the request.
3. Log any notice asking for the full policy separately; do not apply the certificate deadline automatically.
4. Keep wage information, wage records, injury notifications and the register of injuries under their own recordkeeping controls.
5. Record what was supplied to the insurer or inspector and when.
6. Before setting a destruction date or treating one record as replacing another, check the current regulator page and the policy’s PDS.

What can happen if a policy is not kept or produced?

SIRA’s table identifies different enforcement entries for the two duties:

• For failing to keep insurance policies for 7 years, the row lists no penalty-notice amount, but lists a maximum court penalty of 50 penalty units.
• For failing to comply with a notice to produce the insurance policy, the row lists a penalty of $1,100 and a maximum court penalty of 50 penalty units.

These are the entries in SIRA’s employer-obligations table, not an assessment of the outcome for a particular employer.

Why check the regulator page and the policy PDS?

SIRA says its tables, in the page updated 29 July 2026, reflect legislative changes under the 2025 and 2026 reforms. It also warns that website content may change as reforms are implemented and directs readers to its Information Hub for current information.

The table is not exhaustive and does not cover every obligation under workplace injury management, return-to-work guidelines or work health and safety legislation. This is general information, not financial or legal advice. Check the current SIRA regulator page and the policy’s PDS before relying on an internal retention or production process.

Sources

• SIRA — Key employer obligations and penalties — updated 29 July 2026.

FAQ

Does the five-day deadline mean I only need to keep a policy for five days?

No. The 5-day deadline applies to producing a certificate of currency after a request. The separate policy-retention rule is 7 years under section 161(4).

When does the seven-year retention period start?

The cited SIRA table states that policies must be kept for 7 years, but it does not identify the starting point. Check the current regulator guidance before deciding when a policy can be disposed of.

Can a certificate of currency replace the full policy?

The SIRA table lists policy retention, policy production and certificate production as separate obligations. It does not say that a certificate replaces a full policy requested under a production notice.

Do wage and workplace records also have a seven-year rule?

The cited table does not state a retention duration for its wage-information, wage-record, injury-notification or injury-register rows. Its separate 7-day claim-document and injury-information rules are response deadlines, not seven-year retention periods.

Does the policy requirement apply to self-insurers?

SIRA marks the requirement to have a workers compensation policy as not applying to self-insurers. Its table does not provide a complete self-insurer record regime, so a self-insured business should check the current SIRA guidance before applying the insured-employer answer.