When the committee does not meet

Some buildings have a committee on paper and no meeting in years. Some never elected one. In both, the same things happen: the lift contract lapses, the cleaner stops coming, one owner pays the electricity from their own pocket and resents everyone else. Here is where the law stands and where the first step is.

What the law expects

The law on jointly owned buildings requires a management committee for every one of them. That is the framework in force today, whatever happens with the bills in parliament. The committee is the body that holds the building’s money, signs the contracts and answers to the owners. A management company is a tool the committee may hire; it cannot replace the committee, and a building with no committee has nobody a company can sign with.

Who can call the meeting

Any owner can. There is no rule that the meeting has to wait for a chair who no longer lives in the building. What the meeting needs is a notice to every owner, a date, a place, and one item on the agenda: elect a committee. Two or three owners are enough. The law needs names, not a quorum of enthusiasm.

The smallest first step

A message to the owners’ group, if one exists, or a note in every letterbox: a date, two weeks away, in the lobby or in someone’s living room. The message says three things: the building has no working committee, the law requires one, and here is the evening we fix that.

Most people come because someone finally wrote the note.

What the first meeting decides

Only two things. Who is on the committee, and whether to open a separate account for the building. Everything else, the budget, the contractors, the question of a management company, can wait for the second meeting, when the committee exists and can put numbers on the table.

If the building has never had a registered committee, the next step is the Land Registry’s form. We walk that road with buildings on the page about starting from nothing. It is the slow road, and we say so.