Question: How does the committee respond to requests to repair minor and frivolous items in a lot?
An owner made numerous claims on the committee to repair minor and frivolous items in their lot, e.g., a missing insect screen clip and two cracked tiles on the kitchen splashback.
How does the committee respond to nuisance claims? This owner emailed the committee 189 times in 2024.
Answer: Consider making an application for mediation in a bid to temper this incessant communication.
While these claims do seem frivolous, the owners corporation has a strict duty to repair and maintain the common property. On the other hand, there is case law in support of the proposition that an owners corporation needn’t respond to every item of correspondence, especially where it is wasteful, abusive, excessive, etc.
Consider making an application for mediation in a bid to temper this incessant communication.
Leanne Habib
Premium Strata
E: info@premiumstrata.com.au
P: 02 9281 6440
This post appears in the June 2025 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.
The responses of strata managers to the above queries imply that:
a. they have a statutory right to withhold any owner correspondence from the committee
b. the committee has a statutory right to ignore correspondence addressed to the OC
c. committee members don’t have to provide contact details.
According to the Strata Schemes Management Act an owners corporation is managed through a committee system. Consequently correspondence addressed to the OC must be recorded on the agenda and decisions jointly made must be recorded in the minutes. Subsequently, according to S43(e) the Secretary is responsible for communicating the committee’s decision.
Whether or not the secretary delegates the function of replying to such correspondence, the content must be that which is minuted.
The Strata Schemes Management Act does not provide for a secretary or strata manager to bypass the committee process.
The contact details provided to an OC become part of the strata records that every owner is entitled to inspect.
While it might be preferred that owners only communicate with a strata manager the following details communication options.
S262(2)(c) states “A document other than a summons or other legal process may be given to an owners corporation—
(a) by leaving it with the chairperson or secretary of the owners corporation or a member of the strata committee or in the letterbox of the owners corporation, or
(b) by posting it, by prepaid mail, to the owners corporation at its address recorded in the folio of the Register comprising the common property, or
(c) by emailing it to an email address specified by the chairperson or secretary of the owners corporation or a member of the strata committee for the service of documents.
Our strata manager only communicates with secretary.
Strata committee does not have transparency to any communication between strata manager & secretary.
Committee only get verbal advice in term of he said, she said.
In other strata plans, it seems all Committee members receive correspondence directly from strata manager.
How is secretary supposed to coordinate the communication with transparency?
Thank you.
I have been “instructed” by our strata manager that I must send any request directly to her and that she will then decide whether to send on. This has now added another layer for communications with our SC.