Question: If pipes running through my lot service more than one lot, is it the owners corporation’s responsibility to inspect them?
I have a drain pit in my backyard and understand the pipes run through my lot and service more than one lot. My next-door neighbour has contacted the strata managing agent, advising they have noticed water in their backyard. The strata managing agent has advised I may need to pay a plumber to inspect and confirm if there is an issue with the pipes. As the pipes service more than one lot, who is responsible for organising and paying the plumber?
Answer: Pipes that genuinely serve more than one lot are common property, so inspecting and repairing them is the owners corporation’s responsibility.
If the pipes genuinely service more than one lot, they are common property, and both the investigation and any repair are the owners corporation’s responsibility, not yours.
The location of a pipe doesn’t decide who owns it
This is what trips most people up, and even strata managers, up.
People assume that because something sits inside their lot, including under their courtyard, behind their wall, or beneath their floor, it must be theirs. In New South Wales, that isn’t how pipes work.
Under section 4 of the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 (SSDA), a lot is defined as cubic space that “does not include any common infrastructure”. Common infrastructure captures pipes, wires, cables and ducts that are not for the exclusive benefit of one lot. The same section defines common property as any part of the parcel not comprised in a lot, “including any common infrastructure that is not part of a lot”.
Read those two definitions together and the test becomes simple. The question isn’t where is the pipe?, but who does the pipe serve?
A stormwater line that drains your and your neighbour’s courtyard is not for the exclusive benefit of one lot. It is common property, even though every metre of it sits under your grass. The drain pit is treated the same way if it forms part of that shared system.
What that means for the owners corporation
Under section 106(1) of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (SSMA), the owners corporation is required to “properly maintain and keep in a state of good and serviceable repair the common property”.
That duty is a strict one. It isn’t limited to repairs the owners corporation feels like doing, and it doesn’t switch off because the defective item is awkward to reach.
Critically, it also carries the investigation with it. An owners corporation cannot sensibly discharge a duty to repair common property while declining to find out whether the common property needs repairing. This is put beyond argument by section 122(2), which authorises the owners corporation to enter any part of the parcel “for the purpose of determining whether any work is required to be carried out by the owners corporation in accordance with this Act”.
Parliament gave the owners corporation the power to investigate because investigating is part of the job.
There’s also a circularity worth naming. The plumber’s inspection is what will establish whether the line is shared in the first place. Asking you to fund that inspection means paying for the owners corporation’s own evidence about its own asset.
The owners corporation should engage the plumber and pay for the inspection from the administrative fund.
What you should do now
Write to the strata managing agent and ask that the owners corporation instruct a plumber to inspect the pit and the line, on the basis that the pipework services more than one lot and is therefore common property under section 4 of the SSDA, and that the inspection falls within the owners corporation’s duty under section 106.
Keep it in writing. If water is already surfacing in a neighbour’s yard, note that too. An unresolved drainage failure tends to become a damage claim, and the owners corporation carries that exposure under section 106(5).
If the owners corporation refuses, an owner can apply to NCAT for orders under section 232 of the SSMA, and section 106(5) allows recovery of reasonably foreseeable loss caused by a breach of the section as damages for breach of statutory duty.
The exceptions worth checking first
Three things could change the answer, and it’s worth ruling them out before you write:
- Your scheme’s registered by-laws: Section 106 is expressly subject to any common property memorandum adopted by the by-laws, any common property rights by-law, and any by-law made under section 108. A registered common property rights by-law (often granted when an owner was given exclusive use of a courtyard) can shift maintenance responsibility to the owner. Ask for a copy of the consolidated registered by-laws, not the model by-laws. Model by-laws only apply where a scheme has adopted them, and many schemes haven’t.
- The registered strata plan: The definition of a lot allows infrastructure to be described in the plan as forming part of the lot. It’s uncommon, but it’s the one situation where the plan itself decides the question.
- Whether the line really is shared: If the inspection shows the pit serves your lot alone, the answer reverses, and the cost is yours. And if a blockage turns out to have been caused by something you or your tenant did, the owners corporation still repairs the common property but may pursue you for the cost.
None of those change the starting position. On the facts as you’ve described them, the inspection is the owners corporation’s cost.
This post appears in the September 2026 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.
Tim Sara
Sara Strata
E: tim@sarastrata.com.au
P: 04 8500 7960
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