How to deal with a Victorian maintenance plan before it sets your levy

A Victorian levy notice is one number, worked out from a maintenance plan that usually is not attached to it. In September 2026 a committee told LookUpStrata what happened when they let the longest-lived piece of plant set the length of that plan. Asset modelling had given the electrical system a 40-year life, so the owners corporation ran the maintenance forecast out to 40 years. Contributions jumped, and the model showed a large reserve sitting there in year 40. They still wanted the amount owners paid to stay manageable, and they wanted to avoid a special levy when the expensive items came due. The case they put was a lift around year 25 and a main switchboard around year 40.

Sim Firns at Bluestone OCM answered from general practice, and the firm had not seen that particular plan. Maintenance plans are commonly drawn for 10 to 15 years. Plant that falls after the window is recorded, and the contribution being collected now only begins a reserve for it, with the replacement priced again when a later plan brings the job closer.

Owners often do not meet that choice until the lift has stopped or a foyer invoice has arrived, because the notice never included the forecast and nobody asked the manager for it. Stretching the model to 40 years takes money in the current year for a switchboard that may not be replaced for decades. Leaving the contribution thin does the reverse, and the plant fails with nothing saved. Writing a renovation onto the same line as the plant means the vote on that line is paying for the foyer and the lift at once, which is how an argument about carpet ends up deciding whether the switchboard is funded.

You can deal with this as a lot owner, because the fee is voted by the owners and the records are available before the meeting. A renter lives with the lift when it is out of service and does not cast that vote, so the practical step is to send the owner the dates the plant has been down and ask them to read the plan.

Get the plan in writing

Section 146 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 lets a lot owner, a mortgagee, a purchaser, or their representative inspect the owners corporation's records at a reasonable time, free of charge. Copies cost a reasonable fee, which cannot exceed the prescribed maximum, and a maintenance plan is one of the records the owners corporation has to keep.

Write to the manager for the current plan, the maintenance fund balance, and the budget page that shows the fee designated for the plan. A meeting pack that states a fee without the plan is asking you to approve a number you cannot check, so ask for the document before you vote, and use the inspection in section 146 if it does not arrive. Purchasers have the same right. When the plan is missing, and also when it has been built out into a 40-year reserve, the levy printed in the sale papers is not the whole cost of the building.

Section 39 requires a report to the annual general meeting on how an approved plan is being carried out. If the pack sets a fee and never mentions the plan, ask for that report at the meeting.

What to look for in the document

Firns described the usual way these plans are put together. Someone walks the building and talks to the committee, the manager, and the contractors who already service the lifts, the fire plant and the ventilation. Each major item is given a condition grade, often good, fair, average or poor, and a remaining life. Your job is to see what the funding model did with that information.

Look for the last year the model prices. Section 37 says the plan must list the major capital items expected to need repair or replacement within the next 10 years, together with their condition, when the work is expected, what it is estimated to cost, and how long the item should last once the work is done. Lifts, air conditioning plant and heating plant are named in the section. A switchboard, a roof, a fire pump or a hot-water plant belongs on the same list when its replacement falls inside those 10 years, and a model that keeps pricing out to year 40 has gone well past what the section requires.

Then mark which lines are plant and which are a renovation. The lift, the switchboard, the roof, the pumps, the fire services, and the heating and cooling plant wear out on a service life. A new lobby, new common-area joinery, or a change to the look of the entry is a finish somebody chose. Failed paint is maintenance, and a repaint often turns into repair work once a contractor is close enough to the facade to see it. A new foyer is a different invoice. While those two jobs share a single line, you cannot tell which part of the money is optional.

You also need the maintenance fund balance, the annual amount the plan says is required to carry it out, and the fee printed on the agenda. Once a plan has been approved, section 23(2) says the annual fees must include an amount designated for the plan and sufficient to carry it out, and section 42(3) says the amount paid into the fund must be adequate to fund that plan. An agenda fee below the figure in the plan is a vote to leave a gap, and that gap comes back later as a special levy or as work that keeps being pushed back. Put the balance next to the recommended contribution before you decide.

Victoria calls the long-term account the maintenance fund. Other states use sinking fund or capital works fund for the same money, so the name on the statement changes and the comparison does not.

If a renovation is on the plant line

Section 53 treats upgrading, renovation or improvement of common property as upgrading works when the estimated cost is more than twice the current annual fees, or when the work needs a planning permit or a building permit. Those works need a special resolution, and the owners corporation can levy fees to pay for them. The definition leaves out work that is already written into an approved maintenance plan, and it also leaves out repairs the owners corporation is already required to carry out under section 4.

Section 52 requires a special resolution before the owners corporation makes a significant alteration to the use or appearance of common property, unless the plan already permits the change, section 53 has been followed, or there are reasonable grounds to believe an immediate change is necessary for safety or to prevent significant loss or damage. A lobby upgrade that has been written into the plan can therefore go through without that harder vote. When the combined fee later looks too high, owners vote the whole line down, and the money that was meant for the switchboard goes with the carpet.

Ask for the lines to be split before the notice is sent. A special resolution has to carry its exact text in the notice, which means the meeting cannot rewrite it once everyone is in the room. Like-for-like replacement of plant stays on the plan. A renovation that changes the building goes on its own motion, with its own figure, in a year that is not already carrying the lift or the roof, so owners who want the higher finish can see that cost by itself and the plant contribution is not riding on their answer.

If you only notice the combined line at the meeting, say what it contains, and be careful about voting the fee down on the spot. Rejecting the whole amount can leave the lift short of money. Separating the foyer from the plant takes another motion, later, with its own notice. A bathroom or kitchen inside a private lot never belonged in this fund in the first place, and the approval rules for that work sit with the lot owner.

If the model runs to year 40

This is the situation Firns was asked about. The annual fee rises because the model is collecting toward a large invoice in the future, and the balance climbs toward a reserve in year 40. That money does not have to stay there. Section 43 allows payments out of the maintenance fund in line with the approved plan, and section 44 allows other payments when a special resolution says so. The people who paid the higher fees for years are not necessarily the people who will be on the roll when that later vote is taken.

A figure set for year 40 is a weak price. The Act does not prescribe a formula. For a forecast of ordinary length, Firns described the usual method as listing each item and the year it is expected to need work, pricing that work in today's dollars, applying an inflation allowance so the price is in the dollars of the year you expect to spend, setting the current fund balance against that future spend, and then collecting an annual amount that has the cash there when the job falls due. Over 10 or 15 years the plan gets rewritten before the money is spent. Over 40 years the levy is being struck on a compounded number that the next inspection will throw out.

After a long model has been approved, section 23(2) requires the fees to be sufficient to carry that model out. Section 37(1A) lets the owners corporation amend an approved plan by ordinary resolution, which is the vote you use to bring the forecast back to the works inside about 10 to 15 years, leave the later plant on the list, and stop collecting its full replacement cost in this version of the plan. When the remaining life falls inside the next forecast, the fee steps up while more than one year's owners are still sharing it. The step is annoying. A special levy struck in the year the lift stops falls on whoever owns the lots at the time, and an owner who has already sold has paid the levies up to settlement rather than the replacement invoice, because the invoice stays with the lot.

The committee can defer a job the plan has brought forward when someone who has looked at the asset says it is still sound. That was the limit Firns put on it. Moving the spend also moves the funding. Approving the plan and then raising less than the plan needs is a separate decision, and it is the one that opens the gap.

If there is no plan, or the fee is a token

Section 36 makes a maintenance plan compulsory for a tier one owners corporation, which is more than 100 occupiable lots, and for a tier two, which is 51 to 100. A services only owners corporation is tier five. Tiers three, four and five may adopt a plan and are not required to. Section 46 still requires the owners corporation to repair and maintain common property, so a smaller building without a plan has not been excused from the pump, the roof or the membrane. It has only skipped the document that would have spread the cost, and the next failure arrives as a special levy on the owners of that year. Asking the meeting to adopt a 10-year plan is how that cost gets seen before the failure.

On a site with more than one owners corporation, Firns said the usual practice is a separate budget for each of them, so you need to know which plan you are holding. A residential plan that leaves the lift out, because the lift belongs to a services owners corporation, is only part of the picture.

Annual fees follow lot liability under section 23(3), which means the invoice is the same for every apartment only when the lot liabilities happen to be the same. A shared lift is charged on lot liability across the lots. Section 53 charges upgrade fees the same way, unless the works are wholly or substantially for some lots and not others, in which case the lots that benefit more pay more. A foyer used by the whole building stays on lot liability. It does not turn into a private bill for the ground-floor lots.

How you get this decided when you are one lot

Write to the secretary or the manager before the agenda closes, and ask them to amend the plan, take the renovation off the plant line, and set the maintenance fee at the amount needed to carry out the plan once it has been amended. Section 23(4) lets the owners corporation decide when fees are paid, so you can ask for a correction to be collected through the year instead of arriving as a single notice. Put the wording in the email, then change the name and date so they match the plan you were given:

That the owners corporation amend its maintenance plan to forecast major capital items over 10 years, to record plant with a longer remaining life without fully funding that later replacement in this plan, and to list renovation or upgrading works separately from plant replacement.

That the annual fees designated for the maintenance plan be set at the amount required to carry out the plan as amended, and that the times for payment be quarterly unless the meeting resolves otherwise.

One owner cannot force that text onto an agenda. Under section 74, a lot owner nominated by owners whose lot entitlements total at least 25% of all lot entitlements may convene a special general meeting, and the manager may convene it if those owners nominate the manager. Section 75 says the agenda is the one those owners approved when they made the nomination, and section 76 requires at least 14 days' written notice. The count is lot entitlement on the plan of subdivision, so a headcount of apartments will mislead you. Ten owners in a forty-lot building may clear 25% when the entitlements are equal, and two large lots may clear it by themselves. New South Wales lets a single owner require a motion on the next agenda. Victoria uses this nomination instead, though the notes on how to write the motion are still worth reading before you send the email.

Where the plant has already failed and the fund is empty, section 25 allows the owners corporation to borrow. An ordinary resolution is enough when the amount borrowed does not exceed the current annual fees, and a larger sum needs a special resolution. The interest is added to the cost of the replacement. A loan fits a failure that has already happened. Borrowing while the lift is still running adds that interest to a bill the plan ought to have been collecting all along. If the fee already on the agenda is more than you can pay this quarter, the request to make is for time under section 23(4). Voting the plant line down so this notice is smaller only moves the same invoice onto fewer owners later, usually with less time to arrange the money.

Keep the scheme file in one place the committee and the manager can both open. Features, pricing, or book a tour.