TrulEConcerned wrote:
I heard from Fair Trading that the OC can enforce by laws if it chooses, but has legal requirement to do so. Is that true?
Did you mean “has no legal requirement”? (I assume so, otherwise the statement is contradictory) If so, once again, Fair Trading is giving out highly dubious advice.
I had a chat with former Fair Trading Minister Victor Dominello about this a couple of years ago and he was quite clear on this. “Read what I said on the second reading of the Bill (the 2015 strata Act)” The owners corporation has a responsibility to enforce its by-laws.”
I think the key phrase in the Second Reading is this:
Members of the strata committee will now have a statutory duty to act for the benefit of all owners and to exercise due care and diligence in their role.
This view and consequences for not doing so are enshrined in Section 232 (2) of the Act:
Orders to settle disputes or rectify complaints
(2) Failure to exercise a function
For the purposes of this section, an owners corporation, strata committee or building management committee is taken not to have exercised a function if:
(a) it decides not to exercise the function, or
(b) application is made to it to exercise the function and it fails for 2 months after the making of the application to exercise the function in accordance with the application or to inform the applicant that it has decided not to exercise the function in accordance with the application.
So, yes, the committee can decide not to enforce your by-laws in a specific case, either by refusing or failing to do so within a certain time, but then you can go to NCAT and ask for orders compelling them to take action.
If Fair Trading told you otherwise, they are wrong (yet again).