The new Amendment Bill to the SSMA 2015 includes the following powers to Fair Trading:
The Bill includes key reforms that aims to encourage owners corporations to comply with their duty to maintain and repair common property. They include:
- helping owners corporations to maintain and repair their common property by restricting an owners corporation’s ability to defer building works if safety or amenity is affected and
- prescribing requirements for the 10-year capital works fund plan, and empowering NSW Fair Trading to enter into enforceable undertakings with owners corporations or issue compliance notices where owners corporations have not met their duty to maintain and repair the building.
Fair Trading will have the power to impose substantial penalties if the content of compliance directions issued to owners corporations are not complied with. As an ultimate sanction, NSW Fair Trading also now has standing to apply to NCAT for the compulsory appointment of a strata managing agent to a scheme unable to meet its obligations under the Act.