Every System Needs a Steward

Who checks the fire extinguishers in a block of flats? In many schemes the honest answer is everybody, which in practice means nobody. Each system that matters in a complex, from the extinguishers in the passages to the gate motor, the borehole pump and the insurance renewal, has a service or renewal date, and dates only get noticed when one named person owns them.

Where one trustee is responsible for the insurance and another for the maintenance plan, the dates come up at meetings because somebody's name is attached to them. Where the trustees as a group are responsible for everything, each assumes another has it in hand, and the extinguishers drift past their service dates without anyone ever deciding to let them.

A managing agent helps, but an agent acts on instructions and cannot fix what the trustees never raised. The record of who owns what usually sits in the minutes of a trustee meeting. When it is clear, an owner with a complaint knows whose door to knock on. When it is vague, the complaint goes into a general inbox and stays there.