- No South African court or CSOS adjudicator has yet issued a reported ruling on EV charging disputes in community schemes.
- Trustees are already under pressure to approve charging infrastructure without clear policies, billing systems, or electrical planning.
- Experts warn that schemes without formal EV charging rules could face costly litigation and significant financial exposure.
No South African court and no Community Schemes Ombud Service (CSOS) adjudicator has yet issued a reported ruling on an electric vehicle (EV) charging dispute in a body corporate or homeowners association. However, that silence will not last, and schemes that wait for the first judgment to land may be the ones caught inside it.
That is the warning from Johlene Wasserman, Director of Community Schemes and Compliance at VDM Incorporated, who says trustees are already facing pressure to approve chargers in shared parking areas without the legal framework, electrical capacity, or billing systems to support them.
“Every trustee in this country should have an EV charging policy on the agenda of their next meeting. If it is not on yours, ask why. The first ruling on EV charging in a scheme is coming, and no trustee wants their scheme to be the test case,” she asserts.
Wasserman points to the Supreme Court of Appeal’s decision in Parch Properties 72 (Pty) Ltd v Summervale Lifestyle Estate Owner’s Association and Others [2025] ZASCA 155, which confirmed that complex community scheme disputes can be taken directly to the High Court rather than through the Community Schemes Ombud Service.
“That ruling changes the financial calculation for every trustee,” she explains, “CSOS dispute resolution is provided at no cost to applicants and is funded through levies paid by community schemes’ members. A High Court application starts in the tens of thousands and can run into hundreds of thousands of rand once it is opposed. If your scheme does not have a written EV charging policy and an owner or objector takes you to court, you are defending a case you should never have had to fight.”
Trustees, she adds, are being asked to regulate technology that did not exist when their schemes were built. “Without rules, even well-intentioned owners create serious risk, and temporary extension leads across common property have a habit of becoming permanent.”
Wasserman says the questions hitting trustees’ desks are practical and urgent. They include who is allowed to install a charger on or near common property, how the electricity will be measured and billed, who carries liability when a faulty installation damages common electrical infrastructure, and what must be done about an owner who has already run an extension lead across a parking bay.
Without a policy, she says, these decisions are made inconsistently, “which is the single biggest risk, because inconsistent treatment of owners is fertile ground for a CSOS referral or a High Court review.”
Where the law is and is not clear
South African community scheme legislation does not deal with EV charging directly, Wasserman points out. “The STSMA, the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act, the CSOS Act, and the prescribed rules predate the technology. But existing law is not silent either.
“Section 5(1)(b) of the STSMA requires trustees to act in the best interests of the body corporate, which in EV disputes will be interpreted through the lens of their fiduciary duty to protect common infrastructure and communal finances.”
“Prescribed Management Rule 29 governs alterations and improvements to common property, and any charger hard-wired into a communal distribution board almost certainly triggers it. SANS 10142 sets the electrical compliance standards, municipal bylaws regulate the installation, and the common law duty to make reasonable and consistent decisions sits over all of it.”
The Electricity Regulation Act also matters, she continues. “A body corporate acts as an electricity distributor, not a licensee, and cannot casually resell power to an EV owner without sorting out how that recovery will be structured. None of these provisions was written with EVs in mind. All of them apply.”
What a defensible approval looks like
A defensible approval starts with a load assessment and a qualified electrician confirming that the installation complies with SANS 10142 and municipal bylaws, says Wasserman.
“Any charger that affects common electrical infrastructure requires written approval, and the terms must be recorded in a signed agreement that sets liability, maintenance, billing, and removal when the owner sells. Billing has to be transparent and based on sub-metering or an equivalent method.
Without it, communal electricity costs will spike, and owners will subsidise private charging. Extension leads across common property are never acceptable. They create fire and trip risks, and raise insurance concerns. No policy is enforceable until it is formalised through the correct rule amendment process.”
She says schemes should apply rules consistently, commission a load assessment before approving any installation, adopt a formal EV charging policy through the correct resolution process, install sub-metering or an equivalent billing solution, record the terms in a signed charging agreement, and notify insurers when infrastructure is approved.
Owners, in turn, should apply in writing before installing anything, use qualified electricians, provide compliance documentation, pay installation costs where required, and accept liability for any damage caused by their installation where applicable.
The money behind the first dispute
“A standard 7kW home charger drawing residential tariff electricity at R2.50 per kWh, charging a typical EV overnight five nights a week, can add roughly R2,500 to R4,000 a month to the communal electricity bill per car.
In a scheme with ten EV owners and no sub-metering, that is around R40,000 a month, or close to half a million rand a year, being absorbed into the levy base and paid by owners who may not even own cars. That is not a new expense. It is a cross-subsidy. It is the exact issue the first CSOS referral on EV charging will turn on,” she warns.
VDM Incorporated is already fielding EV charging queries from trustees, Homeowners Association directors, managing agents, and owners every week. Wasserman’s advice is blunt.
“Do not wait for the first ruling to land before you put your policy in place. The schemes that will pay the most are the ones that approved installations informally three years ago and now cannot undo them. The schemes that will pay the least are the ones that write the rules before their first application arrives. There is no third option.”
“When the first EV charging matter reaches CSOS or a High Court, and it will within the next eighteen months, the schemes that already have written policies, sub-metering, and signed charging agreements will be the ones not in the judgment.”
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