Question: Is the caretaker allowed to subcontract caretaking duties without approval? If the service is substandard, what rights does the body corporate have to enforce the agreement?
I’m on the committee of a medium-sized Queensland scheme with a long-term caretaker agreement. The caretaker is contractually responsible for maintaining the gardens and lawns. However, over the past two years, they have outsourced almost all of the work to a third-party contractor without notifying the committee or seeking approval.
The committee only discovered this after repeated complaints from residents about the poor state of the gardens. When we raised it, the caretaker said they had the right to subcontract the work and that the body corporate had no say in who they used. The caretaker has not provided documentation or an agreement relating to this arrangement.
The current contractor is doing a poor job and ignoring committee requests. At the same time, the caretaker still invoices the body corporate in full, and we suspect they are paying the subcontractor much less and retaining the difference.
Is the caretaker allowed to subcontract caretaking duties without approval? If the service is substandard, what rights does the body corporate have to enforce the agreement? Can we request to see the subcontractor’s terms or challenge the caretaker’s invoicing if we believe it is excessive?
Answer: Whether the caretaker can subcontract, and if any approval to do so would be needed, depends on the terms of the caretaking agreement.
Whether the caretaker can subcontract, and if any approval to do so would be needed, depends on the terms of the caretaking agreement. Each agreement will have different provisions in this regard.
Either way, the committee will be entitled to have the works properly completed to the standard in the agreement, and the caretaker would be responsible for any substandard works, whether they carry them out or if they subcontract the works.
If the committee can send through a copy of the agreement, we can advise on whether the decision to subcontract requires approval.
There would unlikely be any rights to reduce the caretaker’s salary as this is typically a fixed term of the caretaking agreement. Similarly, there is usually no right to see the caretaker’s subcontracting arrangements.
This post appears in Strata News #757.
Todd Garsden Mahoneys E: tgarsden@mahoneys.com.au P: 07 3007 3753