Others already gave some advice on the matter.
We like to provide more concrete options.
- Strata committee can issue a notice of non-compliance as the first step in the process of remediation. We would expect that strata agency would often deny any wrongdoings.
- Section 19 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (SSMA) allows that a general meeting can be convened by the secretary or the strata committee of an owners corporation.If you have an ethical, decent committee, that is an easy option.
- Next best step is so-called “qualified request”. Basically, owner(s) with total unit entitlement of at least one-quarter of the aggregate unit entitlements, can call an Extraordinary General Meeting and include Motion for contract termination with the strata agency. Careful process is advised to ensure that strata agency does not delete, destroy, or remove any files before they are removed from office.
- Based on our extensive knowledge of NSW strata laws, it is difficult to rely on NSW Fair Trading and NCAT. Formal processes to go through mediation at NSW Fair Trading and then NCAT if mediation is unsuccessful is: costly, especially if legal services are used, time-consuming, and risky, as public officials can ignore the evidence, or even not look at it if they see fit.
- CTTT (in 2012) and NCAT (in 2020) declined to look at evidence against strata manager based on one single decision – “it would be unfair to look at evidence when strata manager failed to show up at the Hearing”. Unbelievable, but true. We have irrefutable evidence why we can make such claim.
- To directly answer your question if NCAT can terminate strata (or building manager) contract under SSMA 2015: Yes, they can, under section 72. Reference case: The Owners- Strata Plan No. 64807 v Sunaust Properties Pty Ltd [2022] NSWCATD 20.
NCAT can terminate oppressive building management (or strata management) contract, as shown in January 2022, where NCAT exercised its power to terminate a building management agreement for the first time. After concluding that section 72 of the SSMA applied to the Agreement, the Tribunal determined that the Agreement should be terminated under section 72 on the basis that:
- Building manager had failed to perform the Agreement satisfactorily,
- Agreement was otherwise harsh, oppressive, unconscionable or unreasonable,
- Building manager regularly failed to act on instructions given by the strata managing agent for the OC, including its requests for CCTV footage and access passes, contrary to the Agreement,
- Building manager charged fee increases and additional fees inconsistent with the terms of the Agreement – further, there was no evidence to support a finding that the Agreement had been varied by, or the additional payments had been approved by, the strata committee,
- Circumstances surrounding the attempt by building manager to halt the AGM were knowingly false and improper and were intended to avoid a resolution for an audit being made at the AGM.
There are other possibilities to terminate the contract, but they mostly relate to criminal activities where civil law is useless. Criminal activities include fraud, stealing from common funds, and so on.