A missing 10-year plan does not, by itself, invalidate a strata company’s budget or its power to raise levies — an owner cannot refuse to pay on that basis alone.
In The Owners of 875 Wellington Street Strata Plan 13599 v Kamil [2026] WADC 72, the District Court of Western Australia considered whether a strata company’s failure to prepare a statutory 10-year plan meant its budgets — and the levies raised under them — were invalid.
The strata scheme comprises 80 lots in a five-storey Perth building used entirely for short-stay accommodation, with two competing owner-operators managing bookings for most of the apartments. The defendant, one of those operators, did not pay his strata levies for 2022 and 2023 — a combined claim of over $560,000. He argued the plaintiff had breached its statutory obligations, including by failing to have a 10-year plan when it set its 2022 budget, and that this meant the levies were raised without power and did not have to be paid. He also counterclaimed for money he said he had spent on common property repairs, refunds he had given guests, negligence, illegitimate pressure and unjust enrichment.
The plaintiff also attacked the reliability of the defendant’s invoices, on which most of his counterclaim depended. Several were dated before the defendant’s company was even incorporated, yet issued under its name and details — put down to “copy and paste” errors. The same invoice number recurred on unrelated invoices issued years apart, and the defendant admitted he chose numbers at random rather than sequentially, and that invoice dates could be out by “a few months” from when the work was actually done.
The plaintiff admitted it had not had a 10-year plan in place in 2022 but denied this affected its power to raise levies, and denied the other alleged breaches and counterclaims.
The Court found that:
- the Strata Titles Act 1985 (WA) does not make a valid 10-year plan a precondition to a strata company’s power to determine and levy contributions to the reserve fund — the two obligations, while related, are not legally linked;
- an approved budget is a precondition to expenditure, but nothing in the Act makes the 10-year plan a precondition to an approved budget, or to the validity of a resolution raising levies;
- the defendant’s evidence of the work he said he carried out and the money he said he spent on common property could not be relied upon, and did not establish that the plaintiff had been negligent, applied unconscionable pressure, or been unjustly enriched; and
- none of the defendant’s defences or counterclaims succeeded, in either action.
The Court entered judgment for the plaintiff in both actions — for $136,406.80 plus interest, and $433,386.95 plus interest — dismissed the defendant’s counterclaims, and ordered him to pay the plaintiff’s costs. [Note: at the date of the decision, these orders were proposed only — the Court indicated it would hear further from the parties before finalising them, so the orders as summarised above should be verified against the final orders made.]
The key takeaway: an owner cannot withhold levies simply because a strata company has failed to prepare or update its 10-year plan. That failure is a separate breach in its own right, with its own remedies under the Act — it does not, on its own, unwind the budget or the levies raised under it.
If you need advice or assistance in respect of strata company levies, budgets, 10-year plans, or recovering unpaid contributions, please do not hesitate to contact the team at our Perth office.
This article was first published on 28 September 2026 and was written by Ray Santos, Lawyer in our Perth office.
© Bugden Allen Group Legal Pty Ltd. This is general information only and not legal advice. You should not rely on this information without seeking legal advice tailored to your specific circumstances.
