CFA Regulations 2025

About the 2025 Regulations

The 2025 Regulations operationalise the powers in the CFA Act and sit above CFA’s policies and doctrine.

The 2025 Regulations were developed by the Department of Justice and Community Safety (DJCS) on behalf of the Minister for Emergency Services. CFA played an advisory and consultancy role in this process and the resulting changes consist of updates to clarify, streamline and support CFA operations now and into the future.

Victorian regulations must be reviewed every ten years to ensure they remain fit for purpose.

The new CFA Regulations 2025 can be viewed on the Victorian Legislation website - Country Fire Authority Regulations 2025.

A printed version of the CFA Regulations 2025 can be purchased via the Victorian Legislation website.

Some of the areas that were updated include:

Administrative matters, such as modernising Authority (Board) proceedings, improving arrangements relating to the registration of CFA brigades and groups, consolidating brigade model rules and elections requirements, and clarifying financial management arrangements for Brigades
Membership of brigades, including expanding and clarifying member conduct, physical fitness requirements, and duties
Employee and volunteer discipline and appeals, including clearer requirements relating to investigations, hearing of charges and appeals process
Volunteer compensation, which directly outlines processes for officers and members of brigades and industry brigades in making personal compensation claims for both injury and personal property
Fees and charges for CFA services are being implemented to include a charging process for CFA services at commercial events.
Fire prevention measures, including elections and local government nominations to regional fire prevention committees, permits to burn during fire danger periods, conditions or restrictions on engaging in high fire risk activities, and regulating fire suppression equipment
False alarm services, the current false alarm fees will remain, subject to a later review to align both CFA’s and FRV’s false alarm fees.

Frequently Asked Questions

In Victoria it is legislated that regulations expire every 10 years, to support the government to develop better options that do not simply maintain the status quo. 

This enables significant changes in technology, community expectations and business practices to be considered so that the basis for analysis is the nature of the problem today, and not 10 years ago. 

In anticipation of the DJCS commencing its formal review of the Regulations, in early 2023 CFA commenced engagement with volunteers, staff and other key stakeholders to seek feedback on the current operation of the Regulations. CFA was also aware of existing areas of improvement in the regulations due to matters or issues identified over the life of the 2014 Regulations. 

Following the engagements with stakeholders about the operation of the current Regulations, CFA developed policy proposals for approval by the CFA Board. These policy proposals aimed to guide CFA's advice to DJCS on their drafting of the new Regulations. 

Following the approval of the CFA Board, CFA consulted with key stakeholders on these policy proposals. DJCS reviewed and endorsed the policy proposals. The policy proposals were then approved by the Minister for Emergency Services. 

The approved policy positions formed the basis for the development of the Regulatory Impact Statement and draft Regulations, which were open for public consultation via Engage Victoria between 12 March - 13 May 2025. 

Yes, in some circumstances, there will be changes. 

There are four key areas of change: 

Regulations about the management and administration of CFA, which affect CFA members or employees; 
Regulations pertaining to CFA membership and the rights and obligations of CFA volunteers, which affect CFA members, prospective members and other persons (e.g. volunteer discipline and dependants of members entitled to compensation under CFA’s Volunteer Compensation Scheme). 
Regulations about fire prevention and control, which affect all individuals and businesses in country Victoria; and include specific regulatory requirements affecting the private plantation forestry sector, and companies providing automatic fire alarm monitoring services; and 
Regulations about fees and charges for CFA services, which affect users of the services for which charges may be imposed.

A significant number of the proposed changes are administrative in nature.  

Page last updated: Monday, 6 July 2026 4:45:08 PM