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Make no mistake, the single most important change the government could include in its strata law review would be to make the enforcement of by-laws compulsory (as it is in other states).
If you don’t like your by-laws, you can change them. But if you’ve got reasonable rules in place, enforcement shouldn’t be at the whim of your executive committee or strata manager.
Take this story I was sent last week; an example of what happens when an executive committee is too gutless or lazy to do the right thing.
The couple concerned had a long-running problem with often unsupervised children squealing and shrieking on the common property roadway outside their townhouse from afternoon till late at night.
When they asked the kids to play at their own home or keep the noise down, they were threatened and abused by the parents. Police advised them to take out an Apprehended Violence Order but that made no difference.
So they recorded the noise, noted events, collected signatures from other residents and took the evidence to an executive committee meeting. They were told it was a personal issue.
It wasn’t – it was about multiple by-law breaches, but the shrinking violets on the EC didn’t want to know.
Typically, the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal wasn’t much help. The adjudicator targetted only one culprit out of many – making it really personal – and dismissed one complaint on a pedantic interpretation of a by-law. It’s easy to nitpick when you’re not suffering the consequences.
Now the noise is so bad that the couple have to move out at weekends. They’ve had filthy nappies thrown in their yard, torches shone in their windows and their front door repeatedly bashed late at night. The so-called adults abuse them in front of the kids, who stand around cheering.
The Executive Committee could and should have sent a message to these animals that their behaviour wouldn’t be tolerated. But by-law enforcement is optional so they ducked the issue and let one innocent couple suffer Hell in their own home. Wimps!
You can read the whole sorry tale by going HERE and scrolling down to the posting by ‘Mailbox’
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“But By-Law enforcement is optional…” – Jimmy T
I'm still new to this amazingly helpful forum so please bear with me. Exactly how is by-law enforcement optional? Surely there's something that can be can be done swiftly and decisively to help someone in a strata experiencing the types of problems mentioned which just shouldn't be happening?
Ours is one of the ECs that don't want to bite the bullet. A notice has actually appeared on our noticeboard recently saying that disputes between residents are not the responsibility of the body corporate, and that residents should “call the police or take them to the Tribunal”. I don't know why these people bother to get on the EC…..The Secretary does nothing, we don't have a strata manager, there is a lot of frsutration here, but the EC have all the proxies sewn up…Bring on strata law change asap…I like Jimmy's suggestions re this.
But… is an EC in NSW duty-bound to take action where the Strata Titles Act is being breached, say by someone fencing off a common property garden area, as opposed to when a building’s By-Law is being breached which it seems is ‘optional’?