How long first aid training lasts

The two numbers

The pattern in that table is the whole point of this page. The same interval can be a recommendation in one setting and a binding rule in another, depending on whether an instrument has picked it up. In a workplace covered by work health and safety law, the three year and twelve month intervals are guidance. In an education and care service, regulation 136 makes a currency period part of the regulation itself.

Why the distinction is worth knowing

Because it tells you what actually happens when somebody lapses.

If the interval is a recommendation and your duty is to provide first aid adequate for your workplace, a lapsed certificate is not itself an offence. It is evidence about the adequacy of your arrangements, and its weight depends on the situation. A club whose only trained volunteer went two months over during the off season is in a different position from a service running a school holiday program with nobody current.

If the interval sits inside a regulation, as it does for education and care, then currency is part of the requirement and a lapse is a compliance matter directly.

None of this is an argument for letting training lapse. It is an argument for knowing which of the two situations you are in, because the response is different. In the first, you record the gap, manage the risk while it exists and close it. In the second, you close it first.

What the resuscitation council actually says about annual refreshers

This is the part of the subject that commercial training pages leave out, and the reason is not mysterious. The industry sells annual courses, and a guideline saying that annual courses are probably not enough to keep skills sharp is an awkward thing to publish next to a booking button.

It is published here because it is what the guideline says, and because for a community organisation it points at something cheap and effective. The formal certificate is one thing. Ten minutes with a manikin before training night, a few times a year, is a different thing, and the evidence in the guideline favours it. The two are not alternatives.

Practical consequences for a small organisation

Renewal dates cluster, and that is a problem

Organisations that train everybody at once get everybody expiring at once. That produces an annual scramble and a period every year where coverage depends on one booking going ahead. Staggering renewals across the year costs nothing and removes the single point of failure.

The twelve month clock is the one that catches people

The first aid qualification runs for three years, so it feels handled. The CPR component comes around every twelve months and is the one that quietly lapses. If you track one date only, track that one.

Certificates belong to people, not organisations

When a volunteer leaves, their qualification leaves with them. Coverage is a roster question rather than a filing question, which is the practical reason two trained people is usually the real minimum. Keeping a simple list of who is trained, in what, and when it was completed, is enough. It does not need software.

Check what your own conditions say before you rely on this page

A funding agreement, an insurer or a state sporting body can set its own currency requirement, and where it does, that is your interval regardless of what the Code recommends. See conditions attached by somebody else.

Checking whether a certificate is genuine

Nationally recognised training is issued by a registered training organisation. If you want to confirm that a provider is registered and that the unit on a certificate exists, the two public registers are training.gov.au for providers and units, and usi.gov.au, where an individual can see their own nationally recognised training record.

One thing worth understanding, because it looks wrong the first time you see it: many first aid trainers deliver under another organisation's registration, so the RTO named on the certificate is often not the trading name of the business that ran the course. That arrangement is legitimate and common. The publisher of this site is an example of one, and explains its own on the about page.

Instruments on this page checked 9 September 2026. This is a description of public instruments, not legal advice.