@Austman said:
They might not be common property but that doesn’t mean they’re not covered by the OC’s strata building policy.
My comments here only relate to the ACT, which is all I really know with any confidence. Here, the OC is required to take out insurance for the entire property, not just the common property. So, if an insurable event occurs, even where it is usual for the damaged thing to be a lot owner’s responsibility for repair and maintenance, a claim can be made. So, if some fixture was simply worn out or damaged through normal use, the lot owner would repair it. If it were damaged due to some specific insurable event, then the OC’s insurance should cover it.
And if they are covered by the OC’s strata building policy (I think they will be, as a lot fixture) then it’s allowed for the lot owner to make an insurance claim. I don’t think the OC could even stop that.
Here it would be the OC that has to make the claim because the policy holder is the OC, not any individual member of the OC. That is why the OC would pay to do the repair and recoup its costs by claiming on its insurance policy.
Who pays any excess is another question. That seems to vary around Australia. Sometimes it’s written in the Act, sometimes it’s an OC/BC decision.
And if the insurance claim is refused, it’s then the lot owners cost.
In the ACT, the Act requires the OC to be ‘fully insured’. However, it is not possible to be completely, utterly, ‘fully’ insured because every available policy has an excess. Consequently, to the extent that an OC has ‘failed’ to have a ‘full’ insurance coverage, it has to pay the shortfall, normally, just the excess associated with the policy. For years OCs resisted paying the excess if it could be extracted from individual lot owners until a Tribunal case settled the question of who pays.