Strata Common Area Cleaning: What Should Be in Your Body Corporate’s Contract

If you sit on a strata council or manage a body corporate in Perth, you already know that “common area cleaning” means very different things to different contractors. One company’s idea of a clean lobby is a quick mop and a wipe-down of the mailboxes. Another includes a documented schedule, photo audits, and a supervisor who actually turns up.

The gap between those two experiences almost always comes down to one thing: what’s written in the contract.

This guide breaks down exactly what a proper strata common area cleaning contract should include, what it typically costs in Perth, and the questions to ask before you sign anything, so your council of owners isn’t the one fielding complaints about a dirty lift six months from now.

What Counts as “Common Area” in a Strata Scheme?

Common areas are the shared spaces that owners and residents don’t individually own, but everyone uses. In a typical Perth strata building, which includes the following:

• Lobbies, foyers, and entry doors
• Lifts and lift lobbies on every floor
• Internal stairwells and fire stairs
• Corridors and hallways
• Mailrooms and parcel areas
• Bin rooms and waste storage areas
• Basement/undercroft car parks and visitor bays
• Shared laundries, gyms, or pools (where applicable)
• External walkways, entry paths, and building signage areas

Each of these has different cleaning requirements, frequencies, and risks (bin rooms and car parks, in particular). A generic “we’ll clean the common areas” line in a contract isn’t good enough — the scope needs to be broken down space by space.

The Core Inclusions Your Contract Should Spell Out

If your current contract or a quote you’ve just received doesn’t cover most of these, you’re not comparing apples with apples.

How Often Should Common Areas Actually Be Cleaned?

This is where a lot of strata contracts fall short; frequency gets left vague (“regularly,” “as needed”) instead of scheduled. As a general guide for Perth strata buildings:

• Daily: Lobbies, lift interiors, high-traffic entry glass, bin room floors
• 2–3x per week: Corridors, stairwells, mailrooms
• Weekly: Car parks, external walkways, signage cleaning
• Fortnightly to monthly: Deep cleans of glass, hard floor stripping/sealing, high-level dusting

Buildings with more residents, ground-floor retail, or high visitor traffic (think CBD apartment towers) generally need daily servicing on more of these areas than a smaller suburban complex.

What Does Strata Common Area Cleaning Cost in Perth?

Pricing depends on building size, number of common area types, frequency, and access complexity (basements and multi-level stairwells take longer). As a rough guide, most Perth strata common area contracts fall into a monthly retainer model rather than one-off quotes, since it’s an ongoing service tied to the building’s cleaning schedule.

Rather than chasing the cheapest number, compare quotes on a cost-per-scope basis: what exactly is included for that price, and how often? A cheap quote that only covers weekly servicing of a high-traffic lobby will cost your body corporate more in complaints and eventually a switch to a new provider than a properly scoped contract from the start.

Red Flags to Watch For

• No written scope — just a verbal agreement on what gets cleaned
• No insurance certificates provided — ask for a Certificate of Currency before signing
• No supervisor or audit process — nobody is checking that the checklist actually happened
• “Set and forget” contracts with no review clause, as the building’s needs change
• Subcontracted labour with high turnover — different cleaners each week, with no consistency or accountability

If a provider can’t answer these points clearly on a phone call, that’s usually a preview of how they’ll handle a complaint later.

Watch: What Good Common Area Cleaning Looks Like

Who’s Actually Responsible: The Strata Manager or the Cleaning Contractor?

It’s worth clarifying a common point of confusion. Your strata manager handles the administration side of levies, insurance, AGMs, bylaw compliance, and engaging contractors on the body corporate’s behalf. They typically don’t clean the building themselves. Your cleaning contractor (or broader facilities/maintenance provider) is the one physically responsible for servicing the common areas under the scope that your strata manager or council has approved.

If you’re getting inconsistent service, the fix usually isn’t switching strata managers, it’s tightening (or switching) the actual cleaning contract and provider. For guidance on the WA legal framework around strata roles and responsibilities, the Government of Western Australia’s strata titles guide is a solid starting reference, and Strata Community Association WA publishes industry standards worth knowing before you negotiate a new contract.

How Cameron Facilities Approaches Strata Common Area Cleaning

At Cameron Facilities, strata common-area cleaning isn’t a side service bolted onto a general cleaning contract; it’s scoped, scheduled, and audited like any other part of our integrated facilities management offering. That means:

• A documented, space-by-space cleaning scope built for your building
• Supervisors who inspect work and report issues before residents raise them
• Consistent teams, not rotating subcontractors
• Full insurance and compliance documentation provided upfront
• Cleaning that ties into broader building upkeep, including our 10-year maintenance planning and OHS compliance work, so nothing falls through the cracks between contractors

We’ve built our reputation on the idea that a building that “gets cleaned” and a building that’s “actually clean” are two different things. According to the International Sanitary Supply Association (ISSA), cleanliness standards in shared commercial spaces directly influence occupant satisfaction and perceived building value, which matters just as much for strata schemes as it does for office towers.

Ready to Fix Your Common Area Cleaning Contract?

If your body corporate is comparing quotes, dealing with an underperforming cleaner, or simply wants a proper scope written up before the next AGM, we can help you get it right the first time.

Call Cameron Facilities at (08) 6154 0910 to talk through your building’s common areas and get a tailored cleaning proposal, or get in touch online, and we’ll respond within 24 hours.