Under the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, an owners corporation is responsible for maintaining and managing the common property within a strata scheme. While the legislation does not prescribe how often common areas must be cleaned, it requires common property to be kept in a condition that supports its intended use, protects building assets, and helps provide a safe environment for residents, visitors, contractors, and occupants. Regular cleaning forms an important part of meeting these ongoing responsibilities.
Common-area cleaning extends beyond maintaining the appearance of a building. Shared spaces such as entrances, lobbies, corridors, lifts, stairwells, bin rooms, car parks, and recreational facilities experience constant foot traffic and require routine attention to reduce the build-up of dirt, dust, spills, waste, and other contaminants. A structured strata cleaning service helps preserve the condition of these spaces, supports resident satisfaction, and reduces maintenance issues that may develop over time.
For many owners corporations, strata managers, and building managers, engaging a professional strata cleaning service is the most effective way to manage these obligations consistently. Experienced commercial cleaners develop site-specific cleaning schedules, use appropriate equipment for different surfaces, and help maintain common areas to a professional standard across residential, commercial, and mixed-use strata properties. Understanding what NSW strata law requires and how professional cleaning supports those requirements helps strata communities protect their property, improve the resident experience, and maintain well-managed buildings.
What Does NSW Strata Law Require for Common-Area Cleaning?
Section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 requires an owners corporation to properly maintain and keep common property in a state of good and serviceable repair. The Act doesn’t use the word “cleaning” anywhere in this section; cleaning is the practical activity that discharges the duty, not a separately defined legal requirement.
The Duty Applies to Common Property
Section 106 only applies to common property, not individual lots. An owners corporation is not legally responsible for cleaning or maintaining anything inside a private lot. Its responsibility is limited to shared areas that are collectively owned by the owners corporation.
Cleaning Discharges the Maintenance Duty
Cleaning is not a separate legal requirement under the Act. Instead, it is one of the ways an owners corporation meets its broader responsibility to maintain common property. A building may be structurally sound but still fail to meet the requirements of Section 106 if dirt, spills, or waste are left unattended, causing common property to deteriorate or become unsuitable for its intended use.
The Act Doesn’t Fix Cleaning Methods or Frequency
Section 106 requires common property to be kept in good and serviceable repair, but it does not specify how often it should be cleaned or which cleaning methods should be used. This is intentional. It allows each owners corporation to choose a cleaning program that suits its building. For example, a 200-lot apartment tower with a staffed lobby will have different cleaning needs than a six-lot walk-up building. Instead of setting fixed cleaning requirements, the Act leaves this decision to each owners corporation.
The Duty Carries a Financial Consequence
An owners corporation can only be excused from part of this duty by passing a special resolution confirming the item is inappropriate to maintain and that doing so won’t affect safety or appearance, a bar that rarely applies to routine cleaning. Where the duty isn’t met, a lot owner who suffers loss, a slip injury in a lobby left unaddressed for weeks, for instance, can recover damages for breach of statutory duty, with a six-year window to bring that claim.
What Are Common Areas in a Strata Property?
Common property is any part of a strata parcel not comprised in a lot, a definition set in the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 and carried into the management framework by reference. In practice, this includes corridors, foyers, lift shafts, stairwells, communal gardens, parking areas, roofs, and external walls.
The Definition Works by Exclusion
Common property is not defined by a fixed list. Instead, it includes everything that is not part of an individual lot. This means common property can include areas that an owners corporation may not immediately think about, such as rooftop terraces, shared laundries, or plant rooms, even if they are not specifically mentioned in the by-laws or cleaning schedule.
Boundaries Are Set by the Strata Plan, Not by Assumption
Every strata plan defines the boundary between an individual lot and common property for that specific building. For example, a balcony floor is usually part of the lot, while the external wall behind it is usually common property. Each side of that boundary has different maintenance responsibilities. Even buildings with a similar layout can have different boundaries if their strata plans were registered differently. That is why the strata plan is the only reliable way to identify maintenance responsibilities, rather than relying on how a space looks or is used.
Misclassification Is a Common Compliance Gap
An owners corporation that treats a shared space as outside its cleaning scope, without checking whether it’s actually common property, is exposed to a section 106 breach without realising it. Rooftop terraces and communal laundries are the two spaces most often left out of cleaning contracts by mistake, precisely because they don’t look like “common property” in the way a foyer or stairwell obviously does.
Who Is Responsible for Cleaning Strata Common Areas?
The owners corporation holds legal responsibility for common-area cleaning under section 106, but it doesn’t perform that cleaning directly. Responsibility runs through a chain: the owners corporation as the duty-holder, the strata manager who arranges the contract, the strata committee that oversees quality, and the contractor who delivers the service.
The Owners Corporation Holds the Legal Duty
Section 106 attaches directly to the owners corporation, not to any individual within it. This means the legal exposure for a cleaning failure, an NCAT order, a damages claim, sits with the owners corporation collectively, regardless of which individual arranged or failed to arrange the contract.
The Strata Manager Organises the Contract, Not the Duty
A strata manager usually obtains quotes, hires the cleaning contractor, and manages the day-to-day relationship on behalf of the owners corporation. This is an administrative role and does not transfer the legal responsibility. While a strata manager can be negligent in carrying out its duties, the responsibility to meet the requirements of Section 106 remains with the owners corporation.
The Strata Committee Oversees, It Doesn’t Deliver
The committee’s function is quality control: inspecting common areas, raising deficiencies with the contractor, and responding to complaints from lot owners. A committee that receives repeated complaints and doesn’t act on them is a factor NCAT can weigh under section 232, since failing to exercise an oversight function is itself a form of non-compliance.
The Contractor Delivers the Service, Under Its Own Separate Duties
The cleaning contractor is responsible for carrying out the cleaning work and has its own WHS obligations as a PCBU. These responsibilities are separate from the owners corporation’s duty under Section 106. One party’s compliance does not remove the other’s responsibilities. For example, a contractor delivering high-quality cleaning does not make up for an owners corporation’s inadequate cleaning budget. Likewise, a well-funded cleaning program does not excuse a contractor from meeting its own workplace safety obligations.
Who Pays for Strata Common-Area Cleaning?
Routine common-area cleaning is funded through the administrative fund, the annual operating budget the owners corporation raises through regular levies, not the capital works fund, which is reserved for major and capital items rather than day-to-day upkeep.
The Administrative Fund Covers Routine Cleaning
Cleaning is an ongoing operational cost, so it sits in the same fund as insurance, utilities, and strata management fees, the administrative fund, set and reviewed annually. This is distinct from irregular or large-scale works, which draw from a separate pool entirely.
The Capital Works Fund Is Not a Substitute
The capital works fund exists for major, infrequent items: roof replacement, structural repairs, lift overhauls, items with a long-term maintenance plan behind them. Using it to cover a cleaning budget shortfall isn’t how the funds are meant to operate, and an owners corporation that tries to bridge a cleaning gap this way is solving a recurring problem with a fund designed for one-off capital items.
Underfunding the Cleaning Budget Creates a Section 106 Conflict
An owners corporation that sets the administrative fund too low creates a direct tension with its own statutory duty, the money to meet the required cleaning standard simply isn’t there. This isn’t treated as a neutral budgeting choice; a shortfall doesn’t reduce the section 106 standard the scheme is judged against, so an OC with a thin cleaning budget carries the same legal exposure as one that just isn’t allocating the funds.
Lot Owners Can Challenge Inadequate Budgeting
A lot owner who believes cleaning standards have dropped because the fund wasn’t set high enough isn’t limited to complaining about the cleaning itself; they can challenge the budget allocation directly. Getting the figure right at the annual general meeting is the more reliable way an owners corporation stays inside its duty, rather than reacting to a shortfall once complaints or a special levy make it unavoidable.
What Quoting Rules Apply When Engaging a Cleaning Contractor?
Section 102 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 requires an owners corporation to obtain at least two independent quotations for any expenditure exceeding $30,000, the threshold currently set by regulation. Since 11 December 2023, this rule applies to every owners corporation in NSW, not just schemes with more than 100 lots.
The Threshold Applies to the Whole Engagement, Not Each Invoice
The $30,000 figure is measured against the total value of the contract, not against individual payments within it. An annual cleaning contract billed monthly at $3,000 still totals $36,000 across the year, and still triggers the two-quote requirement, even though no single invoice comes close to the threshold on its own.
A Contract Can’t Be Split to Avoid the Rule
Breaking a single cleaning engagement into smaller pieces, separate contracts for foyer cleaning, car park cleaning, and window cleaning, each kept under $30,000, doesn’t avoid the requirement if the work is genuinely one engagement. The rule looks at the substance of what’s being procured, not how the invoicing is structured around it.
Quotes Must Come From Genuinely Independent Parties
“Independent” has a specific meaning under the Act: the quotes must come from parties not connected with each other, and not connected to the strata managing agent, building manager, or a member of the strata committee. Two quotes from related businesses, the same ownership group, a contractor and its subsidiary, don’t satisfy the requirement even if the pricing looks genuinely competitive.
A Defined Scope of Work Makes Quotes Comparable
The two-quote requirement only functions as intended if both quotes respond to the same scope. A cleaning brief that doesn’t specify tasks, frequency, and reporting expectations produces quotes that can’t be meaningfully compared, satisfying the letter of section 102 while missing its purpose of protecting the scheme from inflated or mismatched pricing.
What Happens If an Owners Corporation Fails to Meet Its Cleaning Obligations?
NCAT can order an owners corporation to bring common-area cleaning up to the required standard, and can award damages to an affected lot owner under section 106(5). Failure to exercise a function, including a decision not to act, or two months of silence after a request to act, is itself grounds for an NCAT order under section 232.
Most Disputes Require Mediation Before NCAT
An owner generally needs to attempt mediation through NSW Fair Trading before an NCAT application proceeds. This step exists to resolve cleaning complaints at the scheme level first, formal orders are the fallback once internal resolution and mediation haven’t fixed the problem, not the first point of contact for a cleaning complaint.
Financial Hardship Is Not a Valid Defence
An owners corporation that argues it can’t afford proper cleaning will typically still be ordered to bring the standard up regardless of its current financial position. The funding gap gets resolved after the order, through a special levy raised to cover it, rather than the cleaning standard being lowered to match whatever budget already exists.
Committee Inaction Can Itself Be a Breach
A strata committee that receives repeated cleaning complaints and doesn’t act on them isn’t neutral, silence for more than two months after a request to act is treated as a failure to exercise a function under section 232. This connects directly to the oversight role covered earlier: a committee’s job is to respond to deficiencies, and not doing so carries its own separate exposure alongside the underlying cleaning shortfall.
The Damages Window Extends Well Beyond the Immediate Complaint
A lot owner has six years from becoming aware of a loss to bring a section 106(5) claim, extended from the previous two-year limit. This means a cleaning shortfall that seemed resolved informally, or quietly dropped after a complaint, can still resurface as a formal claim well after the fact, the six-year window doesn’t reset just because the immediate frustration has passed.
Does WHS Law Apply to Common-Area Cleaning Contractors?
Yes. An owners corporation is generally treated as a PCBU under the WHS Act 2011 when it manages common property and engages contractors to work on it, which places WHS duties on top of, not instead of, the strata cleaning obligations already covered.
A Narrow Exemption Exists, and It’s Easy to Lose
WHS Regulation 7 exempts an owners corporation from PCBU status only where common property is used solely for residential purposes and the owners corporation doesn’t engage any worker as a direct employee. Engaging a cleaning contractor doesn’t necessarily break this exemption on its own, but any mixed residential and commercial use, or any directly employed worker rather than a contractor, removes it entirely.
The Consequences Are Not Abstract
In SafeWork NSW v The Owners – SP93899, an owners corporation was fined $225,000, and the business engaged to work on the site was fined $375,000, following a fatal incident on common property. The case didn’t involve a cleaning task specifically, but it established the same principle that applies to cleaning: an owners corporation with management or control of common property carries a real, prosecutable WHS duty, not a nominal one.
One Party’s Compliance Doesn’t Cover the Other’s
The owners corporation and the cleaning contractor each carry independent WHS duties, and neither discharges the other’s obligation. An owners corporation can’t rely on a contractor being generally reputable as a substitute for confirming that contractor’s actual documentation, and a contractor’s own compliance doesn’t shield the owners corporation from its own duty to manage the workplace it controls.
High-Access Cleaning Triggers a Separate Documentation Requirement
Cleaning work above 2 metres, facade work, roof and gutter access, or upper-level balcony cleaning, requires a site-specific Safe Work Method Statement under WHS Regulation section 80. This document needs to exist before the work begins, not be produced after the fact if questioned, and an owners corporation engaging a contractor for this kind of work should expect to see it as a condition of engagement, not an optional extra.
FAQs
Does a strata scheme’s cleaning by-law override the section 106 duty?
No. A by-law can set a higher or more specific cleaning standard than section 106 requires, but it cannot lower the standard or excuse the owners corporation from the underlying statutory duty. Section 106 operates as a floor, not a ceiling a by-law can adjust downward.
Can a lot owner claim damages if common-area cleaning has been inadequate for years?
A lot owner has six years from becoming aware of the loss to bring a claim under section 106(5), extended from the previous two-year limit. This means a longstanding cleaning shortfall can still result in a claim well after the issue was first raised informally.
Does the two-quote rule apply to a strata scheme’s annual cleaning contract, or only one-off jobs?
It applies to the total value of the engagement, not individual invoices. An annual cleaning contract that totals more than $30,000 across the year triggers the requirement, even if it’s billed monthly in amounts well under that figure.
Is an owners corporation responsible for a cleaning contractor’s WHS compliance?
The owners corporation and the cleaning contractor each carry independent WHS duties; one party’s compliance doesn’t discharge the other’s. As a PCBU managing the workplace, the owners corporation still needs to confirm the contractor’s WHS documentation, including a site-specific SWMS for any high-access work, before that work begins.
If a strata manager arranges the cleaning contract, is the strata manager legally responsible for cleaning standards?
No. The strata manager acts as the owners corporation’s agent when arranging a cleaning contract, but the section 106 duty stays with the owners corporation itself. A strata manager can be liable for its own negligence in how it carries out instructions, without that shifting the underlying statutory responsibility away from the owners corporation.
