Mandatory committee training went live in New South Wales on 1 October 2026, and Angus Abadee, the Strata and Property Services Commissioner at NSW Fair Trading, joined an audience of almost 700 live attendees last Thursday morning to explain how it works. The course is free, takes about an hour, and anyone elected to a strata committee from now on has three months to complete it. Here are the key points, including answers to the questions that kept coming up in the webinar chat.
Who needs to do the training, and what does it involve?
The mandatory requirement applies to anyone elected or appointed to a strata committee from 1 October 2026. Existing members don’t need to complete it until their next appointment, although NSW Fair Trading would love everyone to do it sooner. The course has six lessons of about 10 minutes each, runs at your own pace through Strata Hub, and ends each lesson with a short quiz that explains any wrong answers.
Once you’ve completed and passed the training, you receive a certificate to give your secretary. You only need one certificate, even if you sit on multiple committees. Strata managing agents, members of the Australian College of Strata Lawyers, two lot schemes and people filling a casual vacancy for under three months are exempt.
What happens if training is not completed within three months?
Any committee member who hasn’t completed the training within three months of appointment can still attend meetings as an owner but automatically stops being a committee member. NSW Fair Trading has published template notices so secretaries can send a reminder at two months and a final notice at three.
A committee can’t sidestep this by reappointing the same person to a casual vacancy. It can either appoint another member, or the former member can finish the training and be reappointed. Decisions made in good faith by a committee that didn’t know a member was ineligible should stand. If the committee is without a quorum, decisions revert to the owners corporation through a general meeting, or to the strata manager where authority has already been delegated.
What about those committee members who are not comfortable online?
Plenty of you asked about committee members without a computer or the confidence to use one. Angus acknowledged the course is digital first and suggested a few workarounds:
- spend the first hour of a committee meeting completing it together on a laptop,
- ask a fellow member or the strata manager to help in person (a manager may charge a fee),
- visit your local library,
- visit a Service NSW outlet.
Group sessions are fine, but everyone should log in individually so each person gets their own certificate.
If owners worry their committee hasn’t done the training, they should ask the secretary or strata manager to confirm. If that stalls, Fair Trading can help through mediation or a complaint, and owners can call a general meeting to replace the committee.
Will training reduce disputes?
Angus was upfront that there’s no silver bullet in strata. Training sits alongside advice, enforcement and dispute resolution. Mediation applications rose 30 per cent last financial year, and Fair Trading resolves around 75 per cent of mediated matters. Angus believes many disputes start because people don’t share an understanding of who is responsible for what, so a consistent baseline should help. Fair Trading plans a repairs and maintenance module for next year. He also said Fair Trading wants harmony to become the expected standard in strata, rather than the exception.
The training is live now, and Angus encouraged everyone, committee member or not, to give it a go. While you’re in Strata Hub, have a look around, because Fair Trading has some very useful free templates, such as a Capital Works Fund Planner and a strata manager finder tool, with more to come. You can start the course on Fair Trading’s strata committee training page now.
Download the slides
You can download the slides from the presentation here: NSW: Committee Training.
Presenter
Angus Abadee
NSW Fair Trading
E: angus.abadee@customerservice.nsw.gov.au
This post appears in Strata News #812.
What happens when no one will take the test and therefore no one volunteers to be on the committee. There is no committee! I took the test, if you read everything, as you should, it takes more like 2 hours. I did pass and I have the Certificate, but I do not think I will have any other people volunteer. Our complex has 80 villas and we need 5 people to form the comittee. This is something forced onto people that are only volunteers and do not have computers and will refuse to go through all the hoops you demand.