› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › Can we force the EC to spend levies on repairs? › Current Page
You say that repainting of the Building was “agreed” and that Owners’ levy contributions were increased in order to raise the additional funds necessary to do that, and I’m assuming here that the original decision to repaint was properly resolved and minuted at a General Meeting of the Owners Corporation.
That being the case, Section 62 of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (SCMA) states at Cl. 1 that “an Owners Corporation must properly maintain and keep in a state of good and serviceable repair the Common Property and any personal property vested in the Owners Corporation”, and it’s worth noting that Cl. 3 only permits an Owners Corporation NOT to comply with that requirement if “ its decision will not affect the safety of any building, structure or Common Property in the strata scheme or detract from the appearance of any property in the strata scheme”.
Clearly your new Executive Committee’s decision not the repaint the Building (Common Property) breaches the statutory obligations of the Owners Corporation to properly maintain, and it’s further in breach as that decision may affect the structure and will undoubtedly detract from the appearance of that Building.
What can Owners do?
As a first step they can, individually or collectively, apply for mediation of the matter with the NSW Office of Fair Trading by completing this application form, noting the requirement for you to have evidence in support of your claim that the repainting works were agreed to be done and that your new Executive Committee is refusing to get that work done.
If mediation fails, then there are subsequent avenues for Owners to pursue resolution, commencing with this application for Adjudication and the issuing of Orders under S138 or S140 of the SCMA by the NSW Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal.
This may all sound very intimidating, technical, and legalistic, but I can assure you that it’s none of those, and that on the basis of what you’ve outlined in your post, you and the other Owners are on very sound grounds to quickly and inexpensively get the outcome that you’re after; using the collected funds for the purpose intended.