FAQs

The proposed changes to community and strata titles legislation in the draft Bill include:

• tightening regulation of body corporate managers, particularly in relation to conflict disclosure and the charging of fees to community and strata corporations;
• making it easier to achieve a quorum at corporation meetings;
• increasing the prescribed minimum amount of mandatory public liability insurance that must be held by a community or strata corporation from $10 million to $20 million;
• increasing the threshold for when mandatory audits of corporation accounts are required by community corporations; and
• miscellaneous other changes described in the explanation of the draft Bill.

The proposed Regulations will address concerns raised recently about the ability for community corporations to respond in a timely way to notices for the replacement of flammable cladding and other building rectification notices. This is in light of the current requirement to obtain a unanimous resolution of owners to agree to the community corporation expending the costs of rectification works if they exceed the specified threshold per apartment.

The Government recently announced the creation of the “Combustible Aluminium Composite Panel Cladding – Limited Loan Scheme”, which will offer eligible owner-corporations loans to do cladding remediation and removal works on their apartment buildings.  The proposed Regulations would provide that only a special resolution of owners (that is, a vote where not more than 25% of owners vote against the resolution) is required for a community corporation to expend an amount exceeding the prescribed $5,000 per lot/ apartment threshold, where the expenditure is for completing works required by a council or public authority.