This article discusses how owners can ensure strata committees keep a transparent and correct record of decisions of formal and informal meetings.
Question: How can an owner ensure the committee makes all decisions transparently through formal meetings and records them properly in the minutes?
Our committee operates without transparency and avoids holding proper meetings. I want to ensure the committee makes decisions through formal meetings and records them in the minutes so owners can clearly see the decisions made and who voted for them. How can I require the committee to follow this process without slowing down decision-making?
Answer: Decisions can only be made in meetings.
Strata committee meetings handle the day-to-day operations and decision making functions of the owners corporation. Strata committees must make decisions in duly convened meetings giving the requisite statutory notice (so any owner can attend or object to the matter(s) being considered) with documented minutes of meeting recording decisions made and distributed to all owners in accordance with the strata legislation (except for large schemes where minutes must be requested).
Decisions can only be made in meetings. To address your exact concerns regarding the failure of visibility, transparency, proper record keeping, etc., you can escalate the matter through NSW Fair Trading and NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Leanne Habib
Premium Strata
E: info@premiumstrata.com.au
P: 02 9281 6440
This post appears in the November 2025 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.
Have a question or something to add to the article? Leave a comment below.
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Thanks Leanne In our strata we have actual and current experience with this question – the strata committee not holding its meetings in the manner that you describe and in not accordance with the Act specifically schedule 2.
I agree with your answer, it’s clearly the correct thing to do and in the owners’ best interests but in our experience the challenge has been to directly pin this to schedule 2 of the Act when dealing with an intractable strata committee, and particularly the Chair and strata manager.
Our strata committee runs one meeting per year that’s in compliance with schedule 2 and with a duration of 4-5 minutes with the effect that there is no meaningful business conducted in that meeting and zero transparency for the remainder of the year.
Spearheaded by the Chair and the strata manager the strata committee has argued that it only holds ‘informal’ meetings so not subject to schedule 2, in addition to several other contradictory and illogical rationale .
Worse the Strata Manager, a prominent organisation, (and across multiple strata manager personnel) has been a strong and vocal supporter of this non-compliant approach that given a lot of weight to the committee’s position.
After several years of dissatisfaction and complaint from owners, the owners at general meeting passed a resolution that directed the committee to comply with schedule 2. The committee did nothing to change their meeting behaviour with the strata manager continuing in their support.
Taking the matter to mediation, the OC represented by the Chair and the strata manager entered into a settlement agreement agreeing to comply with schedule 2 but again did nothing to comply.
The matter is currently with NCAT. The challenge has been to deal with the argument of ‘informal’ meetings (a notion not covered in the Act) and tie that to ‘decisions’ made and what defines the boundary between informal meetings, discussions and the like and the formal space where decisions are being made.
Reading the Act and schedule 2 it’s clear what was intended (your answer) however schedule 2 doesn’t make that explicit and leaves a loophole that our Chair and strata manager have made use of for several years.
High hopes that we will bring the mater to resolution at NCAT but its also clear that Schedule 2 needs tightening in the face of intractable committee and more significantly a professional and large strata manager organisation willing to argue against the interests of owners
To keep this comment brief I won’t get into the obvious next questions about election of committee members, removal of committee members and so on, and some recent changes in the legislation that are helping in this space.