The Advisory Newsletter

The establishment of the Community Schemes Ombud Service (CSOS) in 2016 was heralded as a beacon of hope for resolving disputes and overseeing governance in sectional title schemes, homeowners' associations, and various other community schemes. Stakeholders were hopeful that they could quickly, affordably, and reliably solve the complicated problems facing their community schemes.

Sadly, the initial enthusiasm for the CSOS has largely vanished, overshadowed by the vast gap between its good intentions and the bleak reality of its shortcomings in living up to those promises.

Over the next few months, we will be featuring a series of articles where we will undertake an investigative exploration into the operations of the CSOS. Our aim with this series, which will be titled "A Call for Change: Addressing the Shortcomings of CSOS", is to highlight the deficiencies and shortcomings of the CSOS, with the hope that increased public awareness will catalyze essential reforms and force the CSOS to reevaluate its processes in order to better serve those parties it was established to protect. Part 1 of this series, "CSOS's Struggle with Statutory Interpretation" is linked below, under this month’s articles.

We invite you to reach out to us at info@theadvisory.co.za to share any frustrations you've encountered when dealing with the CSOS that you'd like us to address in this series. Your insights are invaluable in shaping our mission to advocate for necessary reforms.

We bring you quite a few opportunities in the next few months to earn a certificate from the University of Cape Town:

On 14 March 2024, from 09:00 to 11:00, Auren will be presenting a webinar entitled “Application of the POPI Act in Community Schemes", which is a discussion that is sorely needed in the industry to ensure proper application of this legislation in community scheme management. If you are interested in attending this two hour webinar, you can register directly on UCT's Law @ Work website, at the links below:

Keep an eye out for more information on further UCT webinars being hosted by our team in our upcoming newsletters.

Finally, there are only a few weeks left to take advantage of the reduced fee offering for early registration for the next presentation of our UCT Sectional Titles Schemes Management online short course, our 10-week course covering various aspects of sectional titles schemes management. Don’t miss out on the chance to save up to R 2 200.00 by registering and getting your payment in before 27 March 2024. You will find more information below and are welcome to reach out to Tim at courses@theadvisory.co.za with any questions you may have:

Please note: You are on our mailing list because you have made contact with us via our website or one of our team members - you can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the bottom of this email, but we hope that you will find value in the information shared and remain subscribed to receive future updates.

ARTICLES - MARCH 2024

CSOS's Struggle with Statutory Interpretation
By Auren Freitas dos Santos

In this article, Part 1 of the series, "A Call for Change: Addressing the Shortcomings of CSOS", Auren discusses CSOS's continued refusal to approve rules submitted that shift the responsibility of maintaining and repairing exclusive use areas to their users as allowed under section 3(1)(c) of the STSMA.