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Hello, firstly might I say how enjoyable reading the flat chat forum issues and comments has been over the last few years.
I am in a Strata in NSW. We are a battle axe block with a very long driveway. At the front of the driveway is a commercial property, with both street access and a right of carriageway over our driveway. The width of the carriageway consists of a garden bed, then a 2 car width road surface and another garden bed. The whole width and length of the carriageway is on our strata plan. Currently the commercial property uses approx 10 metres of our driveway closest to the road to enter their front carpark, and uses the street access as an exit point. The rest of the commercial property, approx 70 metres along our driveway is fenced and therefore, to our knowledge, the owner has never exercised his right of carriageway along this entire length.
The owner of the commercial property wants to develop 7 townhouses on the site (zoning aok). The townhouses would go along the length of the driveway, and there would be carports that would be accessed from our driveway. In other words the commercial owner/developer wants to exercise his right of carriageway along the whole length of the site.
The problem we have with this development is that to gain access from the road surface section of the carriageway, the development will have to construct a number of short driveways across the garden bed section of the carriageway. As we understand rights of carriageways this gives the right to drive over to access a property NOT to build structure on the carriageway. Perhaps it’s a matter of the developer/owner organising legal easements over the carriageway for the driveways?
We don’t want to get into a situation where this new townhouse strata is asking us to clean, maintain and repair all their driveways that they built and use that are on the carriageway that is owned by us.
Any comments, advice or further information would be appreciated.
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It is all up to the council approval process. Our strata has just gone thru this with a nearby development.
The owner of the area wishing to build the townhouses will have to submit documents to council for approval. We had to ensure as many people affected by the development made submissions raising any issues they had with the proposed development. In your submission you can raise undertakings or changes that need to be made to alleviate problems.
If no one raises issues/concerns the council will just rubber stamp the development. Contact your council to find out relevant dates to comment.
With car ports opening directly onto the driveway, I would be worried that tenants living in the proposed town houses would see the driveway as off street parking and leave their cars parked along it.