The good, the bad and the ugly: Reviewing the first decade of the CSOS
08 October 2026 | Zerlinda van der Merwe
The Community Schemes Ombud Service Act 9 of 2011 ("the CSOSA") came into force on 7 October 2016, alongside the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act 8 of 2011 ("the STSMA"). This article will provide an honest reflection on what we believe the Community Schemes Ombud Service (“the CSOS”) have given owners, trustees and managing agents, and where they have fallen short over a decade since their inception.
The good | Progress under the CSOSA
One home for community schemes. The CSOSA applies to community schemes of every kind:
sectional title schemes,
shareblock companies,
home or property owners' associations,
retirement housing schemes, and
housing co-operatives.
Prior to the CSOS, an owner with a dispute about a levy, a conduct rule or a trustee decision had few places to go that did not involve a court.
A structured, tiered process. A dispute starts with conciliation. Only if that fails does it move to adjudication. That order matters, because many disputes are really communication breakdowns, and a conciliator can often resolve them without anyone being declared the winner.
Orders with teeth. An order from CSOS has the same effect as a court order, so it is not a suggestion. Appeals are limited to questions of law, which gives the outcome a measure of finality.
Lower cost of entry. An owner can approach CSOS without first instructing an attorney and paying for a High Court or magistrate's court application. For a person disputing a modest contribution or a parking rule, that access is the whole point of the CSOSA.
Practice directives. The Chief Ombud may issue practice directives on how CSOS operates, which lets the process be refined without going back to Parliament. We must remember that practice directives cannot change the law, which often they do attempt to do.
The bad | Challenges and gaps in the CSOS system
A compulsory annual levy. Every community scheme must pay CSOS a levy, calculated as prescribed. Schemes that have never had a dispute still pay, and many trustees and owners resent funding a service they have never used.
Exhaustion of internal remedies. An applicant is expected to have tried the scheme's own processes first. That is sensible in principle, but owners often do not know what those processes are, and applications are delayed or refused on this ground.
The paperwork burden. The application form, the statement in support and the supporting documents demand a clear account of the facts and the relief sought. Unrepresented applicants often struggle to frame the dispute properly, and a badly framed application can fail even where the complaint is genuine.
Not everything belongs there. Emergencies, criminal conduct and fraud sit outside what CSOS is designed to deal with. Owners facing an urgent problem sometimes discover this only after losing valuable time.
Turnaround times. Over the years, the CSOS response times have improved, with body corporate registrations taking on average 1 - 2 weeks, amended rule reviews and approvals, between 1 - 2 months depending on your response time to CSOS queries, and applications for dispute resolution moving quite quickly between 1 - 2 months, with pending Adjudication Orders standing still quite some time still, from 6 - 12 months in our experience. Often an application that should have been rejected by the CSOS outright is only rejected months later by the Adjudicator for lack of jurisdiction etc. which fills up the roll and slows down the process.
The ugly | What is currently wrong with the CSOSA?
Enforcement. An order is only as good as the compliance it achieves. Many Adjudication Orders are ignored and parties are forced to approach attorneys to assist in the enforcement procedure.
Weaponised applications. A combative owner can use the process to wear down a trustee body made up of volunteers, and a trustee body can use it against an inconvenient owner. Genuine disputes and grudges look alike on paper.
Inconsistent outcomes. Not only do different Adjudicators hand down orders different to each other, the same Adjudicator will vary in their opinion and approach on the same topics.
Fear of the process. Some trustees treat the arrival of a CSOS application as a crisis rather than a prompt to fix what went wrong. In our experience, the best defence is good governance long before a dispute arises:
proper notices,
minute decisions,
consistent enforcement of the rules, and
honest communication with owners.
The way forward: The future of CSOS
After ten years, the CSOSA has given community schemes a forum and a process that did not exist before. Their shortcomings are largely about capacity, speed and enforcement rather than principle. For trustees, managing agents and owners, the practical lesson is the same: know your rules, follow them, and try to resolve a disagreement before it becomes an application.
If you are involved in a dispute in your scheme, speak to TVDM Consultants about the right route.
Would you like some more information on the CSOS? Contact us today on 061 536 3138 or at info@tvdmconsultants.com
About the Author:
Zerlinda van der Merwe is a Co-Founder | Director at TVDM Consultants.