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[DampAndCranky]

Hi everyone.

I am on the EC of a block of units in suburban Sydney. Like many other parts of the city, we have quite a bit of development going on in our suburb.

For the last six months, we have been living next door to a construction site as a new block of units is built.

Without wanting to be too specific, the developer has had access to our common property: we negotiated a fee for the installation of anchors on our common property (the builder needed these installed apparently) and there’s been a bit of argy bargy over common fencing.

The latest issue is particularly concerning to our committee: the builder has sent a request (under the Accessing Neighbouring Land Act, he said) to erect a significant amount of scaffolding on our property for 6 months. He has promised it won’t block resident access but said the scaffolding had to go up within 14 days.

We have been told by our strata manager that if we fail to provide access within the 14 days, the builder will take us to the Environmental Court where she believes they will be granted the access regardless (this is also why we negotiated compensation for the anchors being installed – we were told the builder could take us to the Environmental Court for this). Is this true?

We’re getting quite worried that we have very few rights over our common property. 🙁

Thanks all!

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[Sir Humphrey]

Without having read that Act, I would guess that it has provisions for giving notice (perhaps more than 14 days), reasonable compensation for inconvenience and so on. You might want to check that the OC is sufficiently indemnified by the builder for any injury that might occur on common property. I would be notifying your insurer about this activity which might occur on your common property and check what they would want you to extract from the builder in order to keep you covered. 

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[Lady Penelope]

A summary of the issues is here, along with many answers to your questions:

https://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/25949/Access_to_neighbouring_land.pdf

Can I suggest that, in addition to your other requirements, that your OC creates a clause whereby a penalty must be paid by the developer to your OC for every day that the scaffolding remains on your common property after the 6 month limit? I am sure that the developer has these types of clauses with his subbies!

Such an agreement may need approval by the OC because your OC is entering into a contract for the use of the OC common property. In which case the neighbouring developer should also pay for the cost of the OC meeting.

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[Lady Penelope]

And here’s more information on this issue that you may find useful from Bannermans Lawyers: 

https://www.bannermans.com.au/strata/articles/strata/334-what-to-do-when-neighbours-want-access-to-your-land

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[DampAndCranky]

Thank you, Sir Humphrey and Lady Penelope – some very good tips there! The insurance issue is very important and yes, it is always helpful to…errr…. incentivise the builders to get their work done on time and then we can get our pathways back. Cheers!

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