Glad to help.
(1) On the matter of insurance, decide what period of time you believe the strata manager and/or committee members were engaged in shenanigans that cost the owners including you money or resulted in reduced insurance cover.
Let’s say the period is 01JAN2019 until 01JUL2022.
You could write to the strata manager – under s. 182 of the SSMA – to provide you with copies of ALL correspondence (by email or otherwise) that was exchanged in the period 01JAN2019 to 01JUL2022 between and amongst the following parties:
(a) The strata manager: (b) committee members; (c) prior insurers the strata used; (d) current insurers the strata uses; and (e) any intermediary such as a broker or a representative used by those listed in (a) through (d) inclusive.
The agent must give you access to the records whether by physical inspection by you in his office or he may choose to make the records available online or via email. He may charge the $34 fee for the first 30 mins of physical inspection (and more if your inspection is longer), but often managers prefer to email owners at no fee or no more than $34 just not to have owners in their offices. Especially when simple matters like copies of emails are sought.
The history of email communications should make you better informed about what’s going on.
(2) Given the inattention by the OC and from your position, a less than satisfactory response from NCAT, you should consider asking NCAT to appoint a Compulsory Stata Managing agent under s. 237 of the SSMA.
This means NCAT turfs out the current strata manager and committee members from their roles and appoints another strata manager to manage the property with no involvement from any owner including those committee members now sacked. The upside is that a new broom is installed at the scheme which often attends to all the outstanding issues, in your case there are plenty to keep the new manager busy. The downside is that the new manager will not need to consult anyone about who he hires, how much the work will cost the OC and what work he will arrange to repair and maintain. Oh and the costs to manage the scheme will rise, possibly by a lot. But then again, matters will be repaired and properly maintained, so surely better than what you’re enduring currently.
To get such an order in your favour you must prove in your application that:
- the management of the strata scheme by the strata manager and committee members is not functioning satisfactorily (things are not being done or being done to the detriment of the owners); or
- the management of the strata scheme by the strata manager and committee members have ignored an order(s) imposed by NCAT; or
- the OC has failed to attend to a duty it is obliged to respond to under the SSMA eg repair and maintain common property (s. 106).
You should summarise your opinion is that the OC are dysfunctional which is proven by their continued dereliction of duty to repair and maintain common property as well as its history of ignoring an NCAT order.
Emphasise just how many YEARS you’ve been waiting for the manager and committee to attend to fixing serious matters which are only getting worse and worse given the inactivity of the strata manager and committee members.