Page 1835 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2016
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I acknowledge that shared liability for water usage and other utilities is an issue of concern for some members of our community who reside in mixed use developments and, while superficially this bill appears to provide the straightforward fix Mr Coe suggests, shared water usage is a complex issue that cannot be addressed simply on its own. Rather, the amendments in this bill are likely to create undue confusion for unit plans across the ACT.
The approach to metering individual units proposed by this bill lacks important legislative protections that currently apply to the installation of other sustainability or utility equipment on common property. To approve such infrastructure at the moment, an owners corporation must be satisfied that, firstly, its long-term benefit outweighs the installation and maintenance costs, and the act goes on to provide a list of factors that must inform this judgement, which includes consideration of site and maintenance plans, and direct and indirect costs.
Mr Coe’s bill does not make reference to similar factors and without reference to these similar factors the bill allows complex installations of water meters to be authorised without sufficient information about their projected benefits, their risks or, indeed, even their technical feasibility. The bill also substantially lowers the threshold for an owners corporation to authorise alterations that may damage other units or common property, including the building’s shared utilities.
Generally, a default rule of an owners corporation will provide that a unit owner may only erect or alter any structure in or on the unit with an unopposed or unanimous resolution of the owners corporation, and this rule recognises that structural works can cause damage or diminish the value of neighbouring premises or common areas.
To meter a unit’s water usage, an installer would need to identify the point where water enters the unit. Some buildings have been designed so that installing meters will be simple, but there are many others where they have not. In addition, for unit plans built before 2009, water and sewerage diagrams may not be readily available. Identifying an appropriate location and installing a water meter will then necessitate substantial building and plumbing works. For this and other reasons, the scheme proposed by this bill is simply not practical.
The approach proposed in the bill raises a number of unresolved questions of access to read water meters also. The bill appears to assume that, where an individual unit’s water meter is installed outside the unit, the utility service will read the meter and charge the owner for their usage directly. I understand that some unit title stakeholders have queried this assumption on the basis that service providers may refuse to assess water usage other than by reading the building’s primary meter.
The bill also seems to envisage that, where a utility service is unable to access a water meter, the owners corporation may read the meter and charge the unit owner for their water usage. This would clearly create an administrative burden on owners corporations and it is unclear how this would operate, as there is no provision that grants the owners corporation a right to enter a unit to read an individual unit’s water meter.
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