#24395

Whale

We need to untangle the logic of what you saying because I don’t disagree with the concerns you start with. Yes you can have problems with contractors and yes not all strata committees are competent.

However, none of this requires a special resolution requirement to address and having a special resolution passed per se will not protect the owners corporation. It will just make an everyday process to approve routine and essential renovations more difficult.

In particular, at present, strata committees can set any condition they like in approving a renovation. It has been suggested that the owners corporation could require that their own contractor install the waterproofing. This is not unreasonable since the waterproofing is common property – the property of the owners corporation. Or the owners corporation could require that the work carried out by the owner be inspected by the OC’s contractor. The owners corporation or strata committees can do this now under the standard By-law 5 that operates in most schemes. Earlier drafts of the new legislation embodied the same provision in the new Section 110 which I originally proposed should cover all renovations that merely improve the condition of the lot without changing the common property, as it is defined.

As the law now stands, if owners don’t trust their strata committee they can nominate bathroom renovations as something the strata committee cannot approve. This is a standard motion at every AGM that specifies matters the strata committee cannot deal with. In most schemes no such matters are listed but it is easy to list anything. An AGM will then have to be called and the matter dealt with by an ordinary resolution. However, doing this at present is at the discretion of individual schemes.

The new legislation forces all schemes to approve such routine matters by a special resolution which is a huge impost on all owners, including those in schemes which have dealt with this issue in an effective, professional and trouble free manner for years .

It is also a fundamental misuse of the special resolution concept. My reading of strata law is that the extraordinary powers of special resolutions are intended to deal with constitutional changes to the strata scheme such as changing common property (as it is defined) or implementing new by-laws. A special resolution is also the mechanism under the new legislation to gain approval for the ultimate constitutional change, namely to wind up the scheme. 

The requirement to apply the same level of approval to bathroom renovations that every owner could expect to get approval for in a reasonably straightforward manner, is bizarre and absurd to say the least. The red tape generated is likely to benefit strata lawyers or strata managers who will deal with the resulting  legalities but is certainly contrary to the originally stated objective of the strata law review which led to the new legislation.