Wednesday, 25 June 2025
ACAT updates for ACT legal practitioners
The below update has been provided by ACAT to be shared with ACT legal practitioners.
Reasonable adjustments
ACAT can make reasonable adjustments to support someone with a disability attending an ACAT listing, such as a hearing, mediation, or conference. If you would like to request a reasonable adjustment be made, please contact the ACAT registry, or contact their assistance officers on (02) 6205 0322 or acatassistance@act.gov.au.
Further information on reasonable adjustments can be found here
New ACAT Forms
ACAT has updated many of its forms. To ensure you use the current form in your ACAT matter, please refer to the forms page.
Parties may use the new online Request For an Adjournment Form – ACAT when requesting an adjournment from the Tribunal.
Practice Note 4 of 2024 – gender and pronunciation
A new ACAT Practice Note sets out a framework to help respectful communication in ACAT Proceedings.
Practice Note 4 of 2024: Pronunciation of names and gender pronouns was published in December 2024.
Parties and their representatives should tell ACAT about the correct pronouns and pronunciation of names of people involved. ACAT may ask for clarification during the case.
ACAT hopes this will help people feel heard and valued and facilitate respectful communication between people appearing at ACAT.
Find ACAT’s Practice Notes, and other laws that give ACAT its powers and procedures, here: https://www.acat.act.gov.au/about_acat/legislation-and-authorising-laws
Lodging applications and other documents
ACAT’s approach to accepting documents has been in place for some time, published on the ACAT website. It includes a limit on how many documents ACAT will print on behalf of parties when they lodge documents. For most applications, ACAT will expect that parties will provide hard copies of documents to ACAT where:
- The total number of documents is more than 40 pages
- Sending it electronically would use more than 3 attachments
- There is an applicable fee and no arrangements have been made either to pay the fee or make a request about the payment
That approach is now embedded in a new Practice Note, Practice Note 3 of 2024: Lodging applications and other documents. It extends to documents given to ACAT electronically, and attachments to applications when they are able to be lodged by email. Find out more about lodging documents at ACAT.
Security information Forms
If you are going to ACAT, and have concerns for your safety or the safety of your clients, you can advise ACAT via the Security Information Report Form which can be found here.
If possible, it is best to advise ACAT at least five days before you are required to attend.
You can also use the Security Information Report Form to report a security incident that has already occurred at ACAT.
New ACAT Procedures Rules
After a review of the current ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal Procedures Rules 2020, ACAT has now made new rules. The new instrument was notified on 5 September 2024 and is available on the ACT Legislation Register.
The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal Procedures Rules 2024 commenced on Tuesday 1 October 2024.
The new rules introduced some key changes to procedures at ACAT, including:
- Embedding the new civil dispute process and repealing rules around default judgment.
- Changes to the concept of service, which will have the biggest impact in civil dispute and residential tenancy applications. Applicants may not need to lodge a separate application for substituted service. However, ACAT will still need evidence that the preferred method of service is likely to bring the document to the attention of the person being served.
- The time for inactive proceedings to lapse is reduced from 12 months to 6 months.
- New specific rules for jurisdictions that did not have them before, such as Residential Tenancies and applications under the Utilities Act 2000.
- New specific rules for the Mental Health and Guardianship jurisdictions.
The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal Procedures Rules 2024 can be found online on the ACT Legislation Register.
If practitioners wish to subscribe to ACAT news they can do so here: Subscribe to ACAT news - ACAT
