Little safety in balcony numbers

After a wooden balcony packed with young people gave way during a party at a house in Lane Cove last week, building advisory service Archicentre said 6 per cent of Australian homes have a timber balcony or deck and about 8000 of them are unsafe.

The problem in strata is that a building may have 100 balconies and, although they are much less likely to be wooden, do we know they are solid enough to withstand the numbers that, for instance, crowd on to them to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks?