Scottish Law Commission – Report on Tenement law: compulsory owners’ associations
As we reported in enews sent to members on 2 May 2024, the Scottish Law Commission was asked by the government to make recommendations on how to legislate to introduce compulsory owners’ associations for tenement buildings. This is part of a wider project to reform tenement legislation which also includes plans to introduce compulsory 5 yearly building inspections and sinking funds to pay for maintenance work.
The commission has recently published its final report on the project, including a draft Tenements (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill. The report along with an executive summary are available at: https://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/publications/archive/reports/2010-present/
The commission’s recommendations include:
- The establishment of owners’ associations in tenement properties by operation of law at specified points in time;
- The imposition of four “key duties” on each owners’ association, namely:
- A duty to appoint a manager for the association;
- A duty to hold an annual general meeting;
- A duty to approve a budget in respect of association costs for each financial year; and
- A duty to apply to have certain information noted on the property registers in respect of the tenement;
- The power to enforce the “key duties” via a remedial management process following an order from the First-tier Tribunal for Scotland;
- Having tenement maintenance disputes dealt with principally in the First-tier Tribunal rather than the sheriff court as at present; and
- A default set of association rules governing the operation of the association, together with provision to move towards a more standardised form of tenement title conditions by which flat owners can modify the default rules.
It is now up to the Scottish Government to review the recommendations and consider next steps.
