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Hi, we’re about to have new carpet laid in our 3 storey walk up block
Am keen to know if we’re obliged in NSW to place treads on this new carpet (the old carpet hasn’t had treads)
Thanks for your assistance!
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Under strata law, if you are repairing the carpet, then you need to replace like with like. So as your old carpet lacked safety treads, then so should your new carpet. If you are upgrading and improving common property, which adding stair treads to the regular carpeted stairs, would most likely be considered to be, then that requires approval at a general meeting as a special resolution. If the repair was approved at a general meeting, as an ordinary resolution, and was described as a “repair” then you would not have justification for spending additional money on improving the stairs. Repairs are paid from the Administration fund, while improvements usually are paid from the Capital Works fund, too.
Nevertheless, if your building should arrange for a Work Health and Safety Report, and in that report the stairs are faulted because they lack treads, then you would be obliged to quickly install the treads, and improve the building’s common property. I doubt that a WH&S inspection would fault stairs without treads, as this is the commonest situation, unless there are some special circumstances involved. If some owners are keen to add treads, then they could arrange for a WH&S inspection and report (which strata buildings should be doing regularly), and make a case to the inspector that the stair are unsafe in their current condition. The inspection may or may not be convinced…So that would be a “no”, then.
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I would suggest that replacing the entire carpet in the building would be a capital improvement/replacement, paid for from the Capital Works/Sinking fund, not a “repair”. Fitting of safety treads would be part of a decision on what type/colour of carpet, etc, to be used.
Treads are not just a safety issues. When we replaced our carpet under similar circumstances a few years ago, we added bull-nose treads to save wear on the carpet edges when residents hauled step trolleys up and down the stairs.
Our block had a similar problem a few years ago, but we decided it would be more effective to replace the carpets on the stairs and common landings with tiles, just keeping the original carpets for the corridors leading to individual units. It is a 3 level building with no lifts, so gets a fair bit of foot traffic.
If you wanted to be proactive on safety as well as wear – and this is after conducting audits of the buildings here. BCA D2.13(a)(v) is worth a look – and it applies to both carpet and tiles. If a new carpet is going down, we were referred to Specification 7 of the NCC….again, if you want to engage in good practice.