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Just listened to Jimmy on 702 and I always want to call but our issue is so complicated I don’t think anyone would understand on the radio.
There are fewer than 10 units in our building which was a mansion built more than 100 years ago, so it’s a highly unusual property. Not heritage though.In a nutshell, there was a DA from renovation to units in the 1990s that set out what our fire systems were to be. These were put in place and then a couple of years later, because the alarm kept going off and they couldn’t fix it, the owners decided to take the system out. As in remove it altogether. The link to the fire dept, the alarms, everything.
They then attempted to replace it for a quote of around $38K. The owners then decided that was too expensive and found a fire company to ‘manage their expectations’. This company then did a fire assessment every year and reported to the Strata company managing our building, that we not compliant. And yet still nothing was done.
Our Strata company has said we don’t have to submit our fire safety statement to the council. They also told us that they had sent these reports away and when we did a freedom of information search at council it had never been reported. This is the tip of the iceberg with the other people in this building.
We are trying to force them to get the fire systems re-installed which will cost a fortune now. There is also the same issue with rising damp that they have now ignored for about 15 years. We are so sick of their stupidity and lack of action.
It feels like an upstairs/downstairs problem. The downstairs people are gentle and non confrontational and the upstairs rule the roost.
Anyway, I could go on for hours. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
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OK, before I go any further, you might want to consider talking to an experienced strata lawyer (and David Sachs of our sponsors Sachs Gerace Lawyers is very reasonable, in every sense).
I am wondering that since the decision to take out the fire alarms and not replace them was made under the old strata laws, where strata committee members could be personally liable for decisions they made that they knew were wrong, you might be able to take action against them for the difference between the original cost and the additional cost now.
All that aside, you can take your owners corporation to NCAT under a section 232(2) for failure to fulfill their duties and responsibilities, and get orders compelling them to do this. You could also get something done about the rising damp under the same section of the Act.
You’re not going to make yourself popular but it sounds like that ship has already sailed.
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