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Section 34 of the NSW strata legislation provides for the appointment of acting members of strata committees. My questions about this process are:
can acting member appointments be used to establish a quorum at any SC meeting?
does the use of acting member appointments need to be approved by those present at each meeting?My initial thought is that it would seem to be an unintended outcome if, for example in a nine member SC, only three members turned up for a meeting and used two acting member nominations to establish a quorum.
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can acting member appointments be used to establish a quorum at any SC meeting?
No
does the use of acting member appointments need to be approved by those present at each meeting?
Yes. Section 34 says “with the consent of the committee …”
To reverse engineer this, if the committee is inquorate, then they can’t vote to allow the acting members to be part of the committee. If the acting members haven’t been approved then they can’t be considered as part of the quorum.
A committee of nine will always need at least five members to turn up, regardless of how many putative “acting members” there might be awaiting approval.If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Yes you can appoint acting members of a strata committee, and that would go to ensuring there is a quorum.
The appointment of an acting member needs to be approved by the Committee at a meeting at which there is a quorum. So you need to have it approved prior to any relevant meeting which the acting member may attend, because if there is no quorum it can’t be approved – circular, but that is the way it works.
In other words, if there is no quorum you can’t have the members who are present approving an acting member.
Yes you can appoint acting members of a strata committee, and that would go to ensuring there is a quorum … you need to have it approved prior to any relevant meeting which the acting member may attend.
That had not occurred to me. At a previous meeting you can say have someone say “Jeff won’t be here next month so can Jenny take his place?” And that way the committee has approved.
But you can’t just have Jeff not show up and Jenny turn up in his place and expect to count towards the quorum.
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My original question was based on a scenario where an existing member seeks to appoint another member as an “acting member”. In other words, a quasi proxy arrangement. As far as I am aware there is no scope for proxy arrangements for SC’s.
You’re right that there is no mechanism for proxy memberships of committees. What tends to happen is that the absent owner nominates someone and the committee decides whether or not to allow them.
in short, an existing member can’t “appoint” a proxy but they can nominate someone to represent them, subject to the committee’s approval.
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I realise this thread is a little old, but it’s quite an interesting one.
The responses sound pretty right for the most part, but after reading Section 34, I’ve got a couple of questions … and I’m not sure it’s necessarily correct that it doesn’t allow for using a stand-in as a proxy – in effect, a quasi-proxy or proxy proxy.
First though, is it right that 34 (1) and (2) mean only owners can serve as acting SC members? Whereas, from memory, anyone (owner or not) can be proposed (by an owner) for election to the committee. I wonder why it’s tighter for acting members. Perhaps because the entire OC doesn’t elect them?
Second, I’m not sure that each meeting has to approve the acting member, if that’s what “Ethicsfirst” was asking. As per “Scotlandx”, although an acting member has to be approved in advance by a fair dinkum SC meeting (ie, one that had a quorum), it looks as if they could be proposed and approved for, say, the next three meetings or maybe for, say, the next two months – while Jim (an elected SC member and the proposer) is off using up his Qantas credits.
Re the potential for an acting member to be a proxy proxy: if a soon-to-be absent member sends along someone – pre-approved by the SC – to act for them, that’s pretty much a proxy, isn’t it?
Further, (3) says the proposed acting member can even be someone who is already on the SC. In which case, (4) says they get two votes: their own as an elected SC member plus that of the absent member for whom they’re acting. Which sounds even more like a proxy, no?
Apologies if I’ve missed the point completely and lost sight of the forest for the trees. It’s quite an interesting section anyway – well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
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