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Hi All!
After numerous issues with the strata of the property I have recently moved into, I have decided to place a hearing request with NCAT.
1 of the major issues is that Strata/OC put up committee meeting minutes on a notice board, and this particular meeting minutes mentions my last name and unit number and issues arising – when does sharing private information become breach of privacy by strata/committee?
My partner took down the notice after I had emailed the strata requesting for them to take it down, even gave them 10 days, they didn’t, so now that my partner took it down yesterday I see that the strata/committee put it back up again with a note stating that publishing of meeting minutes is a legal requirement and that it should be left up! they haven’t even responded to my email request – my surname and unit number is still on there!
2nd major issue is that, they are finding it extremely difficult to define what is common property when it comes to my courtyard. The second day that I moved in I still had boxes (neatly stacked) in my courtyard, out of public site, even my bbq and dog house. there is high hedging along my fence and no one even tall can see my courtyard. the strata have physically climbed over my hedging on a ladder or something and taken photos of my courtyard and have proceeded with sending me a warning! – when does this become breach of privacy?
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Strictly speaking, information contained in minutes is not private information – but the strata committee should be handling this a lot better.
As members of the Owners Corporation, you and all your neighbours are entitled to know what problems there have been, what discussions the strata committee have had and what steps have been taken to remedy them. However, there is no legal requirement for them to “name and shame” owners. That’s a choice they make, and they do so at their own peril.
Strata committees are protected to a certain extent by “qualified privilege” which means they can discuss issues and distribute information that aids the general running of the building, without fear of being sued for defamation, for instance.
The protection is seriously diminished, however, when there is evidence that a) the information has been available to non-owners and b) there is an element of malice behind it.
Minutes on a notice board can be seen by non-resident guests and tradespeople, so they are effectively being broadcast to a wider public than the law prescribes. The question of “malice” is something only you and they know.
The first thing I would do is to “redact” the minutes with a black felt tip pen and inform the secretary that rplacement with your name and unit number visible will be interpreted as a deliberate and malicious act. Then I would present a motion to the committee that in future, residents would be identified only by their lot number (not their unit number and not their names).
On the question of the goods in the yard, I would send a letter to the secretary asking what by-laws have been breached and telling them to use the official Notice To Comply form if such a breach has occurred.
On the matter of the photographs, it is an invasion of privacy only if the photographer was on private property taking pictures without permission.
However, common property is, effectively, the private property of the Owners Corporation. So you can ask who gave permission to the photographer to use common property to photograph your yard, when was this discussed at any official meeting and why were you not informed?
If they can’t adequately answer that, ask that a Notice To Comply be issued to the person who supplied the pictures (Bylaw: Behaviour on common property) along with a demand that all copies of the pictures be destroyed.
Oh, and slightly off topic, some advice from an old journo: You might want to keep your finger away from the Exclamation Mark (or what we used to call a “screamer”)! Overuse indicates a somewhat less than calmly considered opinion. Just saying!!!
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Fortunately where I am in the ACT, we are not required to display EC minutes so publicly. In practice ours can be found by anyone interested but they are not in everyone’s face. Even so, committees I have been on have tried to walk a fine line between accurately recording the deliberations of the committee while avoiding gratuitous exposure of often petty grievances between neighbours.
We avoided using names. In order to be accurate we would have to write things like ‘The owner of unit 25 has complained that the new tenant at unit 24 is doing …’ In our case the unit number is the door number so we can’t disguise it further. I gather that in NSW, perhaps apartments generally, lot numbers and door numbers don’t necessarily coincide so a reference to ‘lot 123’ might not identify a door number in an obvious way, let alone a name. However, if the matter became a legal matter, it might be helpful to have unambiguous minutes that identify times, places, people, dates etc.