I’m going to preface this by saying you need to get professional legal advice on this. The reason I say that is that Section 6 of the Strata Schemes Development Act seems to suggest that you either have to abide by the conditions of your Strata Management Statement (the document under which your strata schemes was formed) or update the SMS accordingly.
As for maintaining services, this is what section 6 says:
Obligations relating to an easement for the provision of services
(1) If an easement for services is created to burden or benefit a part strata parcel, the pipes or apparatus to which the easement relates must be maintained in good order and be repaired:
(a) by the owners corporation, or by another person shown in the instrument by which the easement is created, or in any instrument in the approved form by which the easement is varied, as having responsibility for the matters,
It goes on to say:
(2) If an owners corporation or another person:
(a) fails to carry out a responsibility imposed by subclause (1), and
(b) at least 7 days have passed since the failure first arose, the owners corporation or other person may take all lawful steps necessary to ensure that the responsibility is carried out.
Now, that refers to an easement for the provision of services through a private lot and would probably apply to the daisy-chain cables that, in this instance, have been cut by various renovations.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Strata Schemes Management act defines “services” as including “telephone, internet, radio and television services.”
What does that mean? To be honest, I’m not sure but it seems to suggest that if your SMS says TV services will be provided, then you have either alter the SMS or provide the services.
Call your lawyers or just find a way so that everyone in the block can get free-to-air TV services which is really what this is all about.
By the way, the development Act seems to suggest that the terms of the SMS must be reviewed every five years. Does anyone actually do that?