TAS Recap – Autumn 2020

Chapter Presidents Meeting

I attended this event to represent the interest of Tasmanian members at this National meeting in Melbourne in late February.

While events post-meeting have taken centre stage, I came away from this meeting feeling that SCA National, under Andrew Chambers’ Presidency and with Alisha Fisher in the role of CEO, is clearly improving its engagement with members and effectively tackling a broad range of major strata issues.

Covid-19 Public Health Crisis  

Tasmanian members are working with clients to chart a course through the current Covid-19 public health crisis, which is profoundly affecting many owners, businesses, and, indeed, all areas of society.

In times like these, the community aspect of strata living can come to the fore, if residents are kind and mindful of their own and neighbours’ health and wellbeing.

Strata managers offices in Tasmania remain operational as staff continue to provide the full range of services to owners and strata corporations with many staff working from home.       

These include arranging essential services maintenance, issue works orders for the maintenance of common property and service infrastructure, process and pay supplier and contractor invoices, issue levy notices arrange insurance renewals and replacement insurance valuations, etc.   

At the moment, strata meetings are being held as scheduled by mail vote, phone and internet.   

Many Annual General Meetings are scheduled in the September quarter and how these meetings are conducted in 2020 will depend on the duration of social distancing and gathering restrictions.  

Thank you to SCA National, which has produced a COVID-19 best practice guideline, which sets out measures to help protect residents, their families, neighbours, visitors and site contractors’ health at this time. 

Tasmanian Strata Titles Act (1998) Review

The Land Titles office are moving ahead with a review of the current Act, seeking the further input of industry bodies on a draft discussion paper.

I recently attended a skype meeting as part of this review and put forward a number of practical measures for consideration as part of this review.

Improved compliance with the Insurance requirements of strata corporations is one of the major items which can hopefully be improved as part of the Act review.

We appreciate the invitation to be involved in this process and look forward to seeing practical improvements in a new Act at some stage in the future.