Who checks the water bills?

Hi everyone

My first post and hoping for some insights/perspectives – is it too much to ask that the Strata Managers treat our money like it’s their own?

The background to our situation is this, block of 6 units (mine is tenanted so I’m not there all the time) and judging from our latest astronomical water bill there has clearly been a water leak in our building for some time – the first I was told was that we needed an EGM to raise a special levy to cover the bills so our admin fund doesn’t go into arrears!

Based on the little image that shows ‘this time last year’ on the bill strata have scanned and sent me water use has been doubling each quarter for approx the last year.

I rang Sydney Water and they confirmed yes usage it has been increasing each quarter. 

The other thing that irks me is the bill was sent early July and the strata managers sat on it for 5 weeks before bringing it to our attention.

My question I guess is what are the obligations of strata managers to the owners in this scenario? 

How high or suspicious does a water bill (or other bill) need to get before they will think, maybe we should let the Committee know there’s potentially a problem. 

I am guessing the way they operate is nothing was scrutinised/triggered until it flagged the account wouldn’t cover the water bill (which is the thousands) and that was what prompted calling an EGM.

I am really frustrated and annoyed (and I get that we’ll have to pay the bill), but surely it’s their job to be on top of these things and flag an anomaly like water usage doubling each quarter for the last 12 months? 

The bills are sent direct to them so the only thing I can think of is to ask to see a copy of all the bills (which they’ll no doubt charge for). 

Do I have grounds to complain they are not meeting their obligations?