Owners’ management company disputes have a structural feature almost no other commercial dispute shares: nobody can leave. Directors, members, the managing agent and often the developer are joined permanently by a building — and litigation between them spends the very fund that should be maintaining it, while leaving everyone in the same lift the following morning. This is the dispute class mediation was designed for, and it is this practice’s particular focus.
The Disputes That Actually Arise
Service charges and arrears — the perennial, and three different problems wearing one number: the owner who cannot pay (where mediation produces a realistic, documented and enforceable payment arrangement that litigation never achieves), the owner who will not pay because they dispute the budget, the works or an apportionment (where suing recovers a debt and leaves the grievance to detonate at the next AGM), and the owner refusing in bad faith with means (where the recovery route is the right route — and you will be told so). Sinking funds and levies — the row about a special levy is almost always a row about trust: what the fund is for, why the figure is what it is, why nobody was told sooner. Directors versus members — the civil war that empties boards: volunteers accused of secrecy, members accused of obstruction, AGMs that become hearings. Managing agents — performance, communication, contracts and transitions. Developer handover — common areas and the reversion, incomplete works, defects, unsold-unit contributions, documentation that never arrived. House rules and use — short-term letting, pets, noise, parking, alterations. Works and defects allocation — who pays, in what proportion, over what timescale, with technical files running alongside the firm’s construction practice where structural or fire-safety issues arise.
Designing a Multi-Party Room — and Making the Agreement Stick
OMC disputes rarely have two clean sides, so process design comes before anything else: a board that may itself be divided, a group of members, individual owners with distinct positions, an agent with contractual duties, sometimes a developer. Who attends, in what combination, and — critically — with what authority, because a mediation where nobody present can bind the management company achieves nothing. The questions get settled in advance: can the board agree terms or does something need a members’ resolution; is the agent a party or a source of information; do the members have a mandated representative. Then the settlement is built to work with the company’s own machinery rather than across it — the Act makes a signed agreement enforceable as a contract, but an OMC agreement also has to survive contact with the constitution, the house rules, the budget cycle and the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011 framework of consultation, reserve funds and annual meetings. Where a term needs a resolution or a house-rule amendment to be effective, that is designed into the document, not discovered afterwards. And the whole thing stays confidential by statute — which for a scheme matters more than it first appears: a litigation history follows a development into every future sale, and a mediated settlement does not.
A Scheme at War With Itself?
Describe the dispute in ten lines and name every party - the company, the board, the agent, the developer - for the conflicts check. Whether mediation fits, who needs to be in the room, and what authority they need: the answer comes back straight away.
Call 01 5827148