Great news for gated communities

At last, there's legislation on the way to provide property owners in gated communities with an affordable and effective mechanism for resolving disputes.

This is contained in the new Community Scheme Ombud Service Bill, which was published for comment late last year and is expected to be enacted soon.

The Bill seeks to establish a dispute resolution service not only for ST complexes but for all "community schemes", including share block schemes, retirement villages and estates run by homeowners' associations - in fact any housing complex where there is governance by the community, shared financial responsibility and common land and facilities.

It provides for the establishment of a national Community Scheme Ombud Service - in the Department of Human Settlements - that will provide a framework for the avoidance and resolution of disputes about facilities and behaviour as well as finances.

This will hopefully result in there being far fewer disputes, and in the swift and cost-effective resolution of those that do arise by trained and knowledgeable members of the new service.

And it is sure to be a major improvement on the current situation, in which the only set dispute resolution mechanism is the compulsory arbitration stipulated for ST schemes and not applicable to other gated communities, leaving owners in those communities to battle their way through lengthy and costly court procedures that are often also very damaging to relationships between neighbours.

It will also remove the responsibility for overseeing gated community governance from the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, which is really only geared up to handle land survey and deeds registration functions.