With the help of thousands of apartment owners, owners corporation managers and other OC representatives, Cladding Safety Victoria has now resolved 1400 buildings, equating to 85 per cent of Class 2 buildings in Victoria impacted by combustible cladding. This partnership has given CSV a unique insight into the challenges faced by apartment owners and residents. Watch this video to learn more about their experiences.
Annie Chester, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
We had no idea that we had any combustible cladding on the building. I was a little bit frightened about a few things because the townhouses are wooden balconies and they all have gas barbeques and they were all tenanted. Lovely tenants but they were all tenanted, and that made us a little bit wary of the limitations of what we could do as a body corporate to ensure the safety of the block.
Tom Bevington, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
It came as a complete surprise to us, in fact we were rather shocked because we'd spent quite a lot of time on this building, making sure that we complied with absolutely everything.
John Kent, Director of Stakeholder Engagement, Cladding Safety Victoria:
I think in many cases, owners corporations and individual apartment owners are really not aware of exactly how their building is built, whether it has any problems, what those problems mean.
So that leads to problems around: are the right safety features in place? Is the building being properly maintained, and have they got the right people helping them to do those things?
They are often things that don't come to the surface until a problem occurs, and by then it can be a very very expensive fix.
Annie Chester, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
We've had a balcony issue, and worked with an external builder and the owners to rectify that.
Tom Bevington, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
Fire penetrations fixed, there were issues about signage, there were issues about where the fire extinguishers were, I mean, it would be tens of thousands [of dollars]. It was actually quite hard to find somebody who was able to actually fix it, and it wasn't very hard.
Graeme Clifford, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
It was pretty panicky at the time, because we didn't really understand. We'd just spent a lot of money on fire prevention and fire safety on the inside of the building, and we didn't even know about the outside of the building.
Dennis Robson, Owners Corporation Committee Member:
There were some water ingress issues, and the committee made the decision to get them addressed at the same time as the cladding.
John Kent, Director of Stakeholder Engagement, Cladding Safety Victoria:
CSV's program has really lifted the lid on the problems that many apartment owners face. We've had more than 70,000 interactions with apartment owners over the past five years, and through that hundreds of hours of discussions.
Our program was able to play a critical role in helping to work between regulators, apartment owners, and others to come to a solution where problems presented themselves.
Tom Bevington, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
I thought it was quite an elegant solution.
So rather than ripping everything off, it was actually just looking at each individual apartment to see what needed to be done to make sure if there were any fire, that it couldn't spread easily anywhere.
Dennis Robson, Owners Corporation Committee Member:
I attended weekly or fortnightly meetings with CSV representatives, and at all times, I'd have to say, I found the people involved very helpful.
They were obviously out to try and do the right thing by us.
Graeme Clifford, Owners Corporation Chairperson:
My honest opinion is that people are scared about what's going to happen, so they need someone to go to.
Loren Oscari, Owners Corporation Committee Member:
The outcome of it all, we were exceptionally pleased.
I think we were especially supported by CSV, I don't know where we would be, if we didn't have that.
Updated