Common Property Storage in Strata: Bikes, Prams, Mobility Scooters and the Hard Line on Fire Egress

What this guide covers

Why common property storage disputes aren't really about neatness. They're about fire egress under the National Construction Code, accessibility under the DDA, and fair use of shared property.
The hard rules: NCC Volume One Part D1 path-of-travel widths, AS 1668.1 smoke control, AS 1851 maintenance of fire safety equipment, and the near-zero combustible-load limit in fire-isolated stairwells.
What FRNSW lithium-ion battery fire data actually shows, and why bikes and e-bikes need different rules.
A workable framework for prams, mobility scooters, hallway clutter, plants, abandoned items and hoarding.
The legal removal process for abandoned items, including notice periods, photographic record and tribunal pathways.
State-by-state model by-law positions across NSW, Vic, Qld, WA, SA, Tas, ACT and NT.

Anyone who's stared at the same bike chained to a stair rail for three years knows storage in apartment buildings isn't really a tidiness problem. It's the slow drift from "just for tonight" to "it's always been there", and the moment a fire inspector turns up, suddenly it matters a great deal.

A pair of shoes outside a door. A pram folded against the corridor wall. A bike chained to the stair rail because the bike room is full. A pot plant beside the lift. A mobility scooter on charge near a fire door.

Every one of these starts as a courtesy issue between neighbours. In the wrong configuration, every one of them is also a breach of the National Construction Code, the building's fire safety schedule, the body corporate's by-laws, or all three at once. The committee's job isn't to be the building's tidiness inspector. It's to keep the path of travel clear when the alarm sounds, the lift breaks, and a resident on a walker needs to get out.

This guide separates the parts genuinely about safety from the parts about fairness. It shows committees how to handle each without overreaching or doing nothing.

The real issue is not neatness, it is egress, access and fairness

When a complaint arrives framed as "the corridor looks messy", the committee's instinct is often to dismiss it. Fair enough. That framing makes enforcement look petty. It's also wrong about what's actually at stake.

The genuine issues are:

Fire egress. A blocked or narrowed path of travel slows evacuation and can fail the building's annual fire safety statement.
Smoke control. Items in corridors and stairwells contribute to combustible load and can compromise smoke compartments designed under AS 1668.1.
Accessibility. A walker, wheelchair or guide dog needs the corridor at full width. Items that are fine for an able-bodied resident at 7am are not fine for an 80-year-old resident at midnight.
Insurance. Building insurers price fire risk. A building with documented combustible load in fire-isolated paths attracts higher premiums and exclusions.
Fair use. Common property belongs to all owners. A resident who stores items in a hallway is using shared space privately, without consent, and without paying for the privilege.

Reframe the dispute around these five concerns rather than aesthetics, and enforcement becomes defensible. It's also what makes residents accept it.

Storage by item: risk and rule

Item	Primary risk	Where it usually belongs	Hard rule
Standard bicycles	Theft, wall damage, blocked paths	Designated bike room or rack	Never on stair landings or in fire-isolated stairs
E-bikes / e-scooters	Lithium-ion thermal runaway	Ventilated, detected room, not a corridor or balcony	Never charge in single-egress paths
Prams / strollers	Corridor narrowing, trip risk	Inside the lot or allocated pram bay	Must not reduce path of travel below 1m
Mobility scooters	Charging fire risk, access	Approved storage with detection and ventilation	Never in fire-isolated stairwells or near egress doors
Walkers, wheelchairs	Dignity and access	Inside the lot, or accommodation arrangement	Treated under DDA: accommodate first, restrict second
Shoes, mats, umbrellas	Trip hazard, fire load	Inside the lot	Corridor rule with narrow exceptions
Plants	Water damage, pests, obstruction	Balcony or approved garden	Not in fire-rated corridors or near hydrants
Furniture, cabinets	Private takeover, fire load	Inside the lot	Removal unless formally approved
Boxes, recycling, rubbish	Fire load, pest attraction	Designated waste area	Same-day removal process
Anything in the fire stair	Combustible load	Not the fire stair	Zero tolerance: BCA limit is essentially nil

A useful test for any item: if the building lost power and filled with smoke, would this item slow a resident down by even half a second? If yes, it doesn't belong in the path of travel.

Fire egress: the hard line

This is where the committee has the least discretion. The rules are written into the National Construction Code, enforced through the building's annual fire safety statement, and audited by the brigade after any incident.

NCC Volume One, Section D, Part D1: Provision for Escape. Class 2 residential buildings (most apartment blocks) require a continuous, unobstructed path of travel from any point in a sole-occupancy unit to a road or open space. Public corridors generally have a minimum unobstructed width of 1m, with stair widths and landings prescribed alongside. A pram parked on a 1.2m corridor leaves 600mm. That's below the required minimum, and below the width a stretcher needs.

AS 1668.1: The use of ventilation and air-conditioning in buildings, fire and smoke control. Apartment buildings rely on smoke compartmentation and pressurisation in stairwells. Items left in stairwells and corridors compromise the assumptions the smoke control system was designed against. This is why a fire door propped open by a doormat isn't "harmless".

AS 1851: Routine service of fire protection systems and equipment. The annual inspection regime that signs off the building's fire safety statement. Inspectors flag obstructed exits, blocked extinguishers, items stored against fire doors, combustibles in stairwells. Defects identified under AS 1851 must be remediated for the statement to be issued. A building that can't issue its annual fire safety statement is in breach of state fire safety regulations and exposes the owners corporation to penalties.

Building Code of Australia, fire-isolated stairs. The combustible-load limit in a fire-isolated stair is, in practical terms, zero. Storage cabinets, brooms, recycling bags, bikes, boxes: none of it. A fire-isolated stair is the last engineered defence between residents and a fire. Anything in it is a fuel source in the wrong place.

Fire and Rescue NSW reported a record 272 lithium-ion battery fires in NSW in 2023, trending at roughly 10 a week, with e-bikes and e-scooters responsible for around a quarter. There were multiple deaths and many serious injuries linked to these incidents, including fires that started in hallways, garages and balconies overnight while residents slept. The data is what changed the conversation. An e-bike charging in a corridor is no longer a theoretical risk.

When a committee enforces a fire egress rule, language matters. "The corridor must remain clear because it forms part of the required path of travel under the building's fire safety schedule and Part D1 of the NCC" lands very differently from "we don't like things outside doors". One is enforceable. The other sounds like aesthetics.

Bikes and bike rooms: design and management

Bike storage is the most common source of corridor and stairwell clutter, and it usually has a structural cause. The building doesn't have enough racks. Many older schemes were designed with a bike cage holding 10 to 20 bikes for 50 to 100 lots. Newer councils have caught up. The City of Sydney DCP, for example, requires roughly one secure bicycle space per one-bedroom lot and two per two-bedroom lot. Older buildings often sit at around 10 per cent of that.

A committee that bans bikes from corridors but doesn't solve the supply problem will keep fighting the same battle.

Better bike-room management combines four things:

Capacity. Audit the existing racks. Vertical wall-mount racks ($80–$200 each installed) reclaim significant space in a small room. Horizontal floor racks ($120–$300 each) work where ceilings are low. A secure cage system with individual locks runs $200–$600 per space. A 30-lot building can typically double its bike capacity for $5,000 to $10,000, a fraction of the cost of a single fire safety remediation order.

Allocation. Number every rack. Maintain a register of which lot has which rack. This eliminates the "I thought it was free" excuse and makes the abandoned-bike audit straightforward.

Annual abandoned-bike audit. Once a year, tag every bike with a dated cable tie. After 60 days, any bike with the tie still intact is presumed abandoned. Notify the owner if known, post notice in the bike room and lift lobby for 21 days, photograph each bike, then remove and donate to a charity bike workshop. Document the entire process. The photographs and notice records are what protect the committee against a later complaint that someone's bike was "stolen" by the building.

Lithium-battery rules. This is the new layer, and it deserves its own section.

E-bikes and lithium batteries: the new fire risk

The Fire and Rescue NSW data for 2023 (272 lithium-ion battery fires, around 10 a week, with e-bikes and e-scooters accounting for roughly a quarter) has changed how thoughtful committees handle bike rooms. The fires aren't random. More often than not, they involve non-compliant batteries, damaged batteries, after-market chargers, or batteries left charging unattended in confined spaces.

Two standards matter for buildings:

AS/NZS 62133: the safety standard for rechargeable cells and batteries, including lithium-ion. Compliant batteries carry the marking.
UL 2849: the electrical systems standard for e-bikes, increasingly referenced as the gold standard for whole-vehicle compliance.

The practical problem is that non-compliant batteries are widely sold on online marketplaces. A resident can buy a replacement battery for an e-bike for half the price of the certified original, and it can be sitting in the building's bike room within a week. The committee can't police every purchase. It can set the rule: charging only with the manufacturer-supplied charger and battery, on a hard non-combustible surface, in a ventilated location with smoke detection, and never overnight unattended in a single-egress space.

The harder decision is whether to allow e-bike charging in the building at all. Some buildings have moved to outdoor charging stations on the roof or in an open garage zone. Others have built a small dedicated charging room with sprinklers, ventilation and segregation from the residential building. The capital cost of a small charging room is meaningful, $10,000 to $40,000 depending on services, but compared with a corridor fire claim and an insurance non-renewal, the maths isn't close.

Prams, scooters and corridor exceptions

Prams are where the committee's tone matters most. A family with a stroller and a baby isn't the same enforcement problem as an owner who's parked a couch in the corridor. The right answer is rarely "you can never leave a pram outside the lot". It's "here is where it can go, and here is the line we cannot cross".

The line is the path of travel width. A 1.5m corridor with a 600mm pram against the wall leaves 900mm, below the 1m minimum. A 1.8m corridor with the same pram leaves 1.2m, still compliant. The committee should know the corridor widths in its own building and write the rule against them.

Better building responses include:

A small dedicated pram corral on each floor, partitioned off from the corridor, costing $1,000 to $3,000 in carpentry per floor.
A ground-floor pram and stroller storage area near the lift lobby for residents who don't want to manoeuvre prams into lifts twice a day.
An explicit rule that folded prams and similar small items may sit immediately against the lot's front door for short periods, provided they don't extend into the corridor by more than a defined distance.

Mobility scooters need a different framework again. Charging is the issue. Most apartment-class mobility scooters use 24V or 36V battery packs charged at around 5A. Small currents, but still capable of fault conditions. The recommended charging location is ventilated, away from the egress path, fitted with smoke detection, and not in a fire-isolated stair under any circumstance. A retrofit charging room (a converted store, with a hard-wired smoke detector, a ventilation grille and a non-combustible floor) typically costs $3,000 to $15,000 depending on services and the existing space.

If a resident is currently charging a mobility scooter somewhere unsafe, the right committee response isn't "stop charging". It's "let us help find a safe location together", followed by a formal approval recorded in the minutes.

Mobility aids: DDA, accessibility and dignity

A wheelchair, walker, mobility scooter or guide-dog harness isn't a decorative pot plant. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) operates over the top of state strata law. An owners corporation that takes a hard line on common property storage in a way that prevents a resident with a disability from entering or leaving their home is exposed to a discrimination complaint regardless of how clean the by-law is.

That doesn't mean every location is safe. A mobility scooter charging in a fire-isolated stairwell remains a problem under the NCC. The point is that "remove it" is never the first answer. The first answer is to find a workable location that preserves access, charging safety and emergency egress.

A defensible process:

Ask what the resident needs, without demanding unnecessary medical detail.
Identify the common property impact: corridor width, charging location, fire path.
Get fire safety, electrical or accessibility advice if any of those are unclear.
Approve a specific location, charging arrangement and conditions.
Record the approval as a committee resolution so future committees understand it has been considered.

The same process applies to ramps, handrails, accessible parking and other physical modifications discussed in the cross-link below.

Abandoned items: the legal removal process

The most common procedural failure in storage enforcement isn't the rule. It's the removal process. A committee that throws out an abandoned bike without notice and photographs is the committee that gets sued for the value of "a vintage road bike worth $4,000".

The standard removal pathway across most Australian jurisdictions follows the same shape:

Identify the item. Photograph it in place. Note location, date, time and any identifying marks (frame number, registration, condition).
Issue notice. A typical notice period is 14 to 21 days. The notice should be posted on or near the item, posted in a common area (lift lobby, noticeboard), and where ownership is known, sent in writing to the owner. The notice must state what the item is, where it is, why it is in breach, the deadline for removal and what will happen if it isn't removed.
Wait the full period. Removal before the period expires is the single biggest reason these matters end up at NCAT or VCAT.
Photograph again immediately before removal. This is the evidentiary record that the item wasn't removed in time.
Remove and dispose responsibly. Donation to charity (bike workshops, community groups) is preferable to landfill where the item has value. Document where it went.
Keep the file. Photographs, notice copies, dates and disposal records belong on the building record forever.

NCAT and equivalent tribunals have repeatedly upheld removal where the notice was reasonable, the photographic record was complete and the process was applied evenly. The cases that go the other way usually involve short notice, no photographs, or selective enforcement against one resident while others were tolerated.

Hoarding: the tribunal-level issue

Hoarding inside a lot isn't a common property storage issue at first. It becomes one when accumulation reaches the front door, the corridor, the balcony or the level of fire load that compromises egress for the rest of the floor.

The pattern at NCAT and equivalent tribunals is consistent. Extreme accumulation that affects fire egress, smoke spread, pest infestation or structural load reaches a point where the owners corporation must act. By that stage the committee is rarely the right body to manage it alone. A workable response involves the strata manager, a public-health or local-council officer, a mental health pathway where appropriate, and tribunal mediation. Tribunals have ordered access for inspection, removal of specific fire risks and, in the most serious cases, structured clean-out plans with multiple agencies involved.

What the committee should not do is force entry, dispose of personal property or attempt a confrontation alone. The legal path is slower but it's the only one that doesn't expose the owners corporation to a hostile dispute and a personal-injury risk.

Long-tolerated clutter: how to unwind it

The hardest cases in practice are the long-running ones. A cabinet has sat in the corridor outside Lot 12 for five years. Three committees have come and gone. Two new owners bought their lots and assumed it was permitted because nobody had ever asked it to be moved. The committee is now facing the question of whether it can require removal at all.

It can. The work is procedural, not confrontational.

The committee should:

Apply the same rule to every lot at the same time. Selective enforcement after years of silence is what tribunals dislike.
Issue notice in writing, with the by-law reference, the rule, the safety basis and the deadline. Twenty-one to thirty days is typical for non-urgent items.
Offer alternatives where they exist (the new bike room allocation, the pram bay, an approved storage shed location).
Treat hardship and disability cases individually and record the outcome.
Document the process. Next time someone else in the building leaves a cabinet in the hallway, the committee should be able to point to consistent prior enforcement.

Sudden enforcement after years of silence turns a routine common property issue into a neighbourhood dispute. Slow, consistent enforcement is what holds.

State-by-state model by-laws

The fire safety rules are national. The by-law mechanism that enforces them is state by state.

New South Wales. The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and the Strata Schemes Management Regulation 2016 set the framework. Schedule 3 of the Regulation contains the model by-laws, including the obligation to keep the building tidy, not to obstruct common property and not to use common property as private storage without consent. Most NSW schemes have adopted some version of these by-laws or a tighter custom set. Enforcement runs through breach notices, the owners corporation's resolutions and NCAT.

Victoria. The Owners Corporations Act 2006 and the model rules under the regulations cover use of common property. Rule 4 of the model rules deals with use of common property. Items must not obstruct access or interfere with safety. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes guidance on common property obstructions. Enforcement runs through the owners corporation dispute process and VCAT.

Queensland. The Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (BCCMA) and the regulation modules contain the by-law framework. Bodies corporate can register by-laws covering use of common property, keys and access, and storage. The standard module and accommodation module differ in some procedural detail. Queensland is also the jurisdiction with the most public guidance on community management statements, which often contain the specific rules on visitor parking, bike storage and corridors.

Western Australia. The Strata Titles Act 1985 governs by-laws. Schedule 1 contains the standard by-laws and Schedule 2 the governance by-laws. Common property obstruction and private storage are covered by the standard by-laws and most older schemes haven't modernised them. WA committees often find their by-laws thinner than they would like and need to update at the next AGM before serious enforcement.

South Australia. Both strata and community titles operate. The Strata Titles Act 1988 and the Community Titles Act 1996 cover use of common property through articles or scheme rules. Older corporations frequently have minimal articles. A by-law refresh is often a precondition to enforcement.

Tasmania. The Strata Titles Act 1998 and the model by-laws cover common property obstruction. Compliance notices and the Magistrates Court / Resource Management and Planning Appeal Tribunal pathway are the formal enforcement routes.

Australian Capital Territory. The Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011 sets the framework. Default rules cover common property obstruction. Many newer schemes adopt customised rules. ACAT handles disputes.

Northern Territory. The Unit Titles Schemes Act 2009 and the management modules apply. NT schemes have less public guidance and more weight falls on the scheme statement and registered by-laws.

The cross-cutting point: every Australian jurisdiction has a model by-law or default rule about not obstructing common property. The differences are procedural, not substantive. What varies is the enforcement pathway, not whether the resident can leave a cabinet in the hallway.

Common objections and extra checks

"It's only there overnight." Short-term storage can still be a fire, trip or access issue if it sits in an exit path. If the committee allows temporary placement, the rule needs a time limit, a location and a hard line for fire-isolated stairs, hydrants and exit doors.

"The resident has a disability, so we cannot say no." Start with accommodation, not refusal. Accommodation still needs a safe location. The committee should look for a workable alternative, document the safety advice and avoid turning a corridor into the only option.

Check the building's actual egress dimensions. A generic rule about "keeping corridors clear" is weaker than a rule tied to the building's fire safety schedule, exit widths and inspection reports. Measure the relevant areas and keep the evidence with the policy.

Plan for seasonal spikes. Bikes, prams, luggage and delivery boxes increase around school holidays, summer moves and major sale events. A building that only audits storage once a year misses the periods when residents are most likely to treat common property as overflow space.

Committee checklist

Identify which common areas must stay completely clear under the building's fire safety schedule (corridors, fire-isolated stairs, plant rooms, hydrant cupboards, exit doors).
Confirm corridor widths against NCC Part D1 and write the rule with the actual building dimensions in mind.
Confirm the fire safety statement is current and that AS 1851 inspections haven't flagged storage-related defects.
Audit bike and pram storage demand against current capacity. Cost a vertical-rack upgrade if the room is full.
Set a written e-bike and e-scooter charging rule, including approved location, charger requirements and overnight conditions.
Establish a mobility-aid approval pathway with disability accommodation as the starting point, not the exception.
Build an abandoned-item process: notice template, photographic record, 14–21 day period, donation/disposal, file retention.
Identify any long-tolerated common property storage and plan a uniform unwinding program.
Record every approval, exception and removal in the committee minutes so future committees don't reopen settled issues.
Communicate the rules in plain English to owners, tenants and managing agents. Translate where the building's demographics need it.

What good documentation looks like

A defensible storage record per item or incident contains: the lot involved (where known), the location, the date and time, photographs, the by-law or rule referenced, the notice issued, the response received, the action taken and the outcome. None of this needs to be elaborate. It needs to exist, in one place, attached to the lot and the building, and accessible to the next committee.

The buildings that handle storage well aren't the ones with the strictest by-laws. They're the ones where the fifth committee in a row applies the same standard with the same evidence trail. That continuity is what tribunals reward and what residents accept.

How UnitBuddy fits

You'd think the hard part of storage enforcement would be the rule. In practice, it's the memory. The cabinet outside Lot 12 has outlasted three secretaries, two strata managers and a complete handover of the records. The bike presumed abandoned last winter was actually owned by the unit on level 6 who's overseas for a year. The kicker is that the next committee starts the conversation from scratch every time, and that's why long-tolerated clutter stays tolerated.

UnitBuddy is built so the building's storage history outlives the committee that wrote it down. Specifically, it holds:

The relevant by-laws and standard rules, with the registered text and any amendments tracked over time.
The fire safety statement, the AS 1851 inspection schedule and the contractor's reports, so any "this is a fire egress issue" enforcement notice is grounded in a documented building safety position rather than one committee member's view.
A bike-room register: numbered racks, resident assignments, abandoned-bike audits, lithium-battery policy, e-bike charging conditions and any fire-engineer advice.
A mobility-aid approval log capturing the resident's needs, the agreed location, the charging arrangement, the fire and electrical advice, and the periodic review date, kept with the privacy controls accessibility records require.
An abandoned-item notice template with timestamped photos, the 14–21 day notice period, the disposal or charity-donation outcome, and the date the action closed.
A hoarding case file, with welfare correspondence, fire-safety advice, mediation referral and tribunal-ready evidence held under restricted committee access.
The standard offboarding checklist for departing tenants. Bike-room key returned, storage cage cleared, abandoned items chased. Move-out doesn't become next year's storage problem.

Take the long-tolerated cabinet. With the building's history in one place, the committee can show the by-law reference, when it was last reviewed, who's been put on notice in the past five years for the same thing, and what the corridor width measurement is against Part D1. That's the evidence trail tribunals look for, and it's what turns a confrontation into a closed file.

UnitBuddy supports owners corporations and committees working alongside their strata manager. The strata manager calls the meetings, issues the formal notices, advises on tribunal pathways. UnitBuddy holds the per-lot operational record, bike assignments, mobility-aid approvals, abandoned-item notices, fire-safety inspections, hoarding case files, that turns storage rules into a settled, applied policy rather than a fight every committee re-runs.

Common Property Storage in Strata: Bikes, Prams, Mobility Scooters and the Hard Line on Fire Egress