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QUESTION: Our committee issues complaints through the strata manager to individual owners with wording like, “It has come to our notice …”, or “A number of complaints have been received …”
The alleged complaints are always anonymous and some owners believe the committee chairman initiates them to harass and intimidate owners. There is no documentation to support the “complaints” and the chairman and the committee won’t discuss the matter with the owner. There is usually no reference in the committee meeting minutes.
In essence, charges are laid without any evidence and the owner can’t reply to the claims, can’t mount a defence, and definitely can’t rectify a situation if it really exists. Have you any thoughts about the advisability of an executive committee entertaining anonymous and undocumented complaints? – Anonymous George (suburb withheld).
ANSWER: There’s complete anonymity on Flat Chat but there’s no such thing as private correspondence within a strata plan. As an owner you are entitled to see anything written to or by the Executive Committee.
If an owner or resident has written to your committee, you can inspect the correspondence. If the strata manager or chairman says it was a phone call, you are entitled to ask who the phone call was from and what the response was.
Executive committee office-bearers can’t issue Notices to Comply without the EC holding a meeting to discuss the complaint. Many would argue that the secretary – not the chairman – is the only person who can issue a warning. If the complaints haven’t been minuted in meetings they effectively don’t exist and I would respond to that effect.
Strata managers who have been delegated the powers of the EC have to show the ‘paper trail’ of complaints, especially if they are challenged in court or at the CTTT.
Sometimes you need to find ways round that, such as when a resident is scared of their neighbours. But a power-mad chairman consistently using anonymous complaints against owners is nothing short of a form bullying.
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