Can a committee remove shared facilities on common property, such as a tap, or does this require a general meeting vote?
Can a committee decide to remove shared facilities, such as a tap on common property, that residents occasionally use? For example, could the committee make this decision at the committee level to save water or reduce maintenance costs? Or would removing even a small shared facility be considered a restricted issue that requires approval at a general meeting?
The legal definition of an improvement speaks of a 'change', which extends to include addition, removal, relocation, and reconfiguration.
'Improvement' has a technical meaning in the legislation, which includes 'a non-structural change, including, for example, the installation of air conditioning'. Section 186 of the Standard Module uses that definition to permit improvements to the common property by the body corporate, subject to conditions including as to cost and the type/level of approval required.
While 'common sense' may suggest that an 'improvement' can only be the addition of something, the legal definition speaks of a 'change', which extends to include addition, removal, relocation, reconfiguration … and you get the point. Bodies corporate are allowed to take things away from common property, including things much more significant than a tap; see, for example, The Village Centre at Kelvin Grove [2021] QBCCMCmr 464.
Finally, one man's meat is another man's poison. For a lot owner whose bedroom is on the other side of a wall that has a dripping common property tap on it, the removal of said tap is definitely an improvement!
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Michael Kleinschmidt has specialized in strata law for over 20 years. During this time, he has served all of the peak stakeholder groups: Australian College of Strata Lawyers – Fellow and Council Member, Australian Resident Accommodation Managers Association (Qld) - Legal Panel Member, Strata Community Australia (Qld) - inaugural Legislative Committee Chairperson and past Professional Standards Committee member, Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (Queensland) Stakeholders’ Group – ACSL representative, Attorney General’s Community Titles Legislation Working Group - ACSL representative. Across his years of practice, Michael has acted for almost all of the different stakeholder groups (occupiers, owners, bodies corporate, management rights’ operators, banks, body corporate managers, property developers and utilities providers) in almost every conceivable strata matter type ranging from structuring duplexes to 400-lot island resorts, litigating leaking roofs before departmental adjudicators through to appealing novel points of strata law to the Queensland Court of Appeal.
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