Short answer
A genuine emergency — a burst pipe, a dangerous electrical fault, an active leak threatening safety or serious damage — can be dealt with straight away. For common property, the strata committee (or the strata manager acting within their authority) can generally arrange urgent repairs without waiting for a general meeting. The immediate priority is making the situation safe; the repair and its cost are then recorded and approved through the scheme’s normal process.
What counts as an emergency
An emergency is a fault that threatens safety, security or serious property damage if it isn’t dealt with immediately — for example a burst water pipe, a gas leak, a dangerous electrical fault, a serious roof leak, a broken lock leaving the building insecure, or a failed lift trapping residents. The test is urgency and risk, not cost. Routine or cosmetic repairs are not emergencies and go through the normal approval process.
Who can authorise it
For common property, you don’t have to wait for a general meeting to deal with a real emergency. The committee, or a strata manager acting within their delegated authority, can generally arrange the urgent work needed to make the situation safe. The point is to remove the immediate danger — then bring the scheme up to date so the repair is properly recorded and the spending approved.
After the emergency
Once the danger is dealt with, notify the owners corporation, record what happened and what was done, and put the cost through for approval. This keeps the emergency response consistent with the owners corporation’s ongoing duty to maintain common property and keeps the financial trail clean.
Handling emergencies as a self-managed scheme
Without a manager on call, a self-managed committee needs to be able to act fast and still capture what happened. A system such as Straita lets the committee log the emergency, record the urgent authorisation and the contractor called, and hold the cost for approval afterward — so an emergency can be dealt with immediately and still ends up properly documented rather than as an untraceable after-hours call-out.
Primary sources
- Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) — s 106, duty to maintain and repair common property; committee and management functions.
- NSW Government — Strata schemes (Fair Trading) — repairs, maintenance and committee functions.