WA State Recap – Winter 2020

The last three months have easily been the most challenging to navigate through since I stepped into the role as President four years ago. In saying this, I have been overwhelmed by the contribution from the Board, our staff and members who have stepped up and assisted during these unprecedented times.

Navigating through a once-in-a-century pandemic has certainly been interesting. Throwing in the long-awaited Reforms has been testing, and also adding in the necessary restructure of our office has really pushed us to our limits.

I honestly believe that all these elements will contribute towards SCA (WA) becoming a far more efficient and effective Association. We are not there yet, there are still elements that need work; however, the building blocks are all there and over the coming months we should hopefully put most of the obstacles behind us.

We would not have achieved so much if it were not for Catherine Lezer offering to step in and help steer the office through this restructure. The effort from Catherine to get on top of everything in the office has been amazing and I would also like to acknowledge Alisha Fisher and Claudia Montiel from SCA National for their hard work.

Unfortunately, we have had problems with the migration to the new website and these issues are still being ironed out. Signing up for courses and renewing memberships has been testing, and I would like to thank our members for their patience as we work through these faults.

Education

Regretfully, Debbie Morley our Education Manager has decided to step down. Debbie’s unprecedented knowledge in this space is going to be sorely missed, she brought a skillset which is truly unique, given her 20 odd years as a teacher and six years as a strata manager. Thank you, Debbie, for all that you have done for the Association.

In June we met with North Metro TAFE to discuss their plans for the Cert IV in Strata Community Management. SCA National is acquiring the learning materials from RMIT for the Cert IV and has been working closely with ACOP on a supplementary Cert IV which can be completed online.

Our aim is to revise and refresh the Cert IV materials from RMIT, bringing them into line with WA’s new legislation, and then to partner with an RTO on the delivery of this course. We hope to be able to deliver the Cert IV in class and that it will not be restricted to industry professionals, allowing anyone to enrol. As this will take several months to complete, SCA is working with ACOP to update several of their courses so that they will cover WA’s legislation as an alternative.

Landgate

We met with Landgate end of June to review the implementation of the new legislation, discuss the Landgate forms, and begin providing feedback on the Community Titles Regulations.

Needless to say, the new legislation has not been an easy adjustment. The drafting in places is ambiguous and there are a number of errors. The inclusion of s. 118, requiring the authorisation by the strata company for individuals to execute documents, is an unreasonable requirement when we only have six months to resign our management agreements. I am certain that all strata companies would have failed to comply with this section as of 1st

May. I would encourage strata managers and strata companies to do the best they can in implementing the new Reforms, with the understanding that regardless of the challenges thrown at us by COVID-19, there should have been longer transition periods for most new elements in the Reforms.

Following our discussions with Landgate, there will be further updates to their online forms, so please ensure you are regularly checking their website each time you need to utilise one of their templates.

The Year Ahead

With the success that WA has had in managing COVID-19, I am incredibly pleased to be able to say that we will now be going ahead with our Convention and Awards night in November, so stay tuned for a full release on this shortly.

We will also be hosting a sundowner in the second week in August, which will provide the first face-to-face opportunity for us all to come together to network and discuss the challenges we have been facing.

We have had a lot of success with our webinars, with almost 100 participants at the latest event held first week in July. While we will begin to start hosting open forum training, our preference will be to continue to hold the online webinars. We have a range of experts lined up to deliver on some great topics for our webinars and face-to-face events to come.

I look forward to seeing you all there at these upcoming events. All the best and stay safe in these crazy times.

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