Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
I think there is also an issue of whether the replacements are needed or just desired. 4AT RW did not say the windows need repairing, they only said some want to replace them.
It makes a difference to options to proceed whether you can say the windows need replacing. If there are problems caused by the condition of the windows, or they are faulty, it is Strata’s responsibility to repair or replace them because they are common property – no question about it.
You can vote on how, and who fixes them, but it is not optional whether they are fixed, and fixed in a reasonably short time frame. Then Jimmy’s last post is the simple way ahead – when it is needed, the other owners can have theirs fixed down the track.
But if it is a value judgement (eg aesthetics) about whether people want them replaced, and why, then different owners may disagree about the need for it, and have different opinions on the spending of Strata funds on a non vital problem.
Which is the case here?
4atRW, you can get a special by-law to enable those owners who wish to install new windows to pay for their own windows. But as far as I am aware there is no way to make the windows of the other owners stop being common property against those owners will, so those who want new windows now will have to pay (via strata fund or levy) down the track when the remaining owners need new windows. In a four lot scheme all owners would need to agree if you want a special by-law to pass responsibility for windows to individual owners to cover all of you, and it would not be in the remaining owners best interests to do so.
Note that the special by-law would have to pass responsibility for the common property to the owner, so they are able to pay for the windows themselves, but the owner of their lot would then also be responsible for any future repairs and replacements.
To add to Jimmy’s warning above and as someone in a scheme where many things were agreed to informally in the past, without special by-laws, it can be a nightmare to untangle issues down the track. New owners who have no way of knowing about the informal arrangements (because they aren’t included in the by-laws) are quite fairly able to apply strata law to get their normal rights (such as to have windows repaired by strata) and the informal agreements can’t stand up to that.
Depending on the roof design the pebbles can also be to moderate the rate/way water drains from the roof. But evidently something is going wrong if they are blocking the drains. Probably it is all the dirt and weeds in between, or a filter to stop them going in the drain is missing. It may just be that they haven’t been cleaned often enough.
I’d check with a builder or roofing contractor before I disposed of them as it may cause other problems if they are there for a good reason.
If you are in NSW and can’t find your purchase contract, you can call Dept of Fair Trading Strata section and they can bring up your Strata Plan and tell you what your lot consists of, and what is common property. I seem to remember that when I consulted them they rang back after they ordered up the file, so it may have involved a day or two delay to get my answer.
You can probably find information about the levies you pay compared to others from financial information in the Owners Corporation AGM agenda and use that as Tess has described.
As others have said it seems unlikely it is your responsibility, but check to be sure.
Roofing contractors can do the work for you even if you don’t have a fence or balustrade – they will use a harness if necessary.
Perhaps I am missing something, but wouldn’t the waterproofing of a previously unrenovated bathroom in NSW normally be the OC’s responsibility?
I would make absolutely sure about that before going further. I assume your Strata Manager thinks it would be your responsibility, so you may have to go further and consult a lawyer. The NSW Dept of Fairtrading Strata section can give advice on responsibility for repairs too, (although I think some on this site have found it unreliable). Peoples opinions from this discussion will give you a clue as well. Then go back to the Strata Manager with your advice.
NSW Strata Law defines what is a major renovation, so the need for the by-law and vote at a General Meeting is right, but only if you are doing a bathroom renovation and/or involving waterproofing. Part of the point of a by-law is to transfer the future responsibility for the work to the owner. If it is the OC’s responsibility to repair (even if repairing the waterproofing is a major event) then one wont be needed.
However, given the disruptions involved in such work, you may find that doing a renovation at the same time is the most sensible course (or paying extra to get the materials used by the repairer to be the ones you choose) in which case I am not sure what is required. Anyone?
Someone else may be able to say whether EGMs can now be held by electronic means instead, in which case calling an extra meeting may be even easier and cheaper to do. But as already said by others you definitely don’t need to wait for the AGM in November.
Before you go to council about the zoning issue, try and collect as much evidence as you can that this business is going on to show them. The inspector will most likely visit their place once (and quite likely in the daytime during the inspectors regular work hours) and if there is nothing for them to see at that time they cant take the matter further. (especially in the case of a home cooked meals business – if your neighbours can just say they are cooking a lot, rather than it being a business.)
I have wondered about this in the past, because there would be situations where a stair railing is not legally required but the addition of one (or a better one) would enable an elderly or disabled person to cope with accessing their home independently. The reasoning given above that who pays probably depends on whether more than that owner would benefit seems sound. But then what permissions would be needed for such an addition?
Am I right in assuming that in NSW at least:.
- if the railing will be on lot property and not visible from outside, it is a cosmetic renovation and requires no strata approval.
- If it is on common property and the EC decides that the OC will pay and maintain then the EC vote to do so is the permission.
BUT
- If it is on lot property but on the exterior of the lot (I’m thinking of a townhouse) would the commonly used by-law regarding not changing the appearance of the lot come into play? In which case does it require EC approval?
- If it is on common property and only benefits that lot, so the EC decides that the owner should pay and maintain, what kind of approval would be needed?
NOTE: If it is decided that the individual lot owner is required to pay, it might be helpful to point out that some councils or aged care providers will install safety rails (and other safety measures) at reduced costs for some elderly or disabled clients. However I don’t know if this would apply to situations where the stairs in question are on common property. But its worth suggesting to the relevant owner that they find out.
In the case of the elderly see https://www.myagedcare.gov.au/ or contact your local council. You would be asking about “Home Modification” services. An occupational therapist would assess the person’s whole living environment (so the committee may end up with requests for approval for other things as well). Disabled people can use the same site to search for providers, but the funding might be from the NDIS if they qualify.
[This post has been edited to remove unnecessarily combative language]
Someone who has a “medically recognised mental illness” should not be “dealt” with any differently than any other owner.
A person’s illness of any kind is not the OC’s business, unless they have asked for it to be, and even then it needs to be treated with respect, without discrimination and in confidence. (it certainly should not need to be in strata records unless they permit it, or spread as gossip).
Strata can respond to particular behaviour if it causes a legitimate disturbance to other peoples use of their lot or common property, or other breach of by-laws, but they cannot act because someone has a mental illness.
And they should not assume the behaviour has any connection to the mental illness either. A “medically diagnosed mental illness” can mean an extremely wide range of illnesses, degrees of impairment, and level of success of treatment and none of them necessarily correlate to problem behaviour in themselves. You also can’t act on something they might do.
Even when the issue is something like hoarding, you need to be sure that the EC or OC are acting purely on actual documentable and negative impact on Strata property or by-laws, not, for example, your personal judgements on what are acceptable ways to live or keep a house, your discomfort or fears because you can’t understand it, or your predictions of what might happen in the future.
Keep records and document the impact of particular behaviour on Strata appropriate issues, don’t try and attribute cause or throw around diagnoses. This is more likely to be successful because it removes the personal and judgmental element from the interaction. You will also appear more reasonable if things come to mediation or a hearing.
Perhaps you can rephrase your question and tell us if there is a particular disturbance, by law breach or other outcome you are concerned about?
If your question arises out of concern for the person, then it is not a Strata issue, but a personal one, and it is great that you are concerned about your neighbours and your community. The EC or SM cannot step in and make an official response to someones illness, it is up to you to act if you want and think you can help. Here are some ideas –
- Ring or google an organisation such as Sane Australia, Beyond Blue, Lifeline or the Black Dog Institute, to ask for advice on ways you can support people with a mental illness and what to do if you are concerned. They can also tell you the next step for what to do if someone does want you to help them get treatment.
- Ask the person in question if there is anything they would like help with, or that they would like you do if they seem unwell, or who they would like you to call if you are concerned about them. Don’t spread such information about them as gossip.
- If a situation arises that you are very worried about, such as you fear the person is at risk of hurting themselves or others, already has done so, is causing an extreme disturbance or making others fearful of their safety, you should call the police. If they have not been seen for a while, you can also call the police and ask them to do a welfare check. (Calling the police may sound horrible if you do not wish to cause trouble for the person, but the police are used to dealing with these situations, and are the ones with the power to take people to hospital compulsorily if needed.) Call your local police station unless it is an emergency, in which case call 000.
I doubt anyone is sitting in their apartment enjoying the sound of a battery warning from their smoke alarm every 30 seconds, so making a noise complaint to council or the OC is overkill and probably ineffectual. You really just want the noise to stop and a personal request is probably enough for that. Your problem is finding someone to ask.
Firstly, look at your own smoke alarm. Depending on the age of your building if yours is hardwired its likely that they all are in your building and you can assume the source of the noise is elsewhere.
Have you asked around your neighbours (above and below you as well as next door)? If its driving you nuts its probably annoying someone else too. They might help narrow down the direction its coming from. If you don’t know your neighbours this is your chance to meet them. Take a spare battery and make a joke of it. And if it turns out that one of them is deaf and the beeping noise gets louder when they open their door to you….problem solved!
However its more likely that its in a unit that is currently unoccupied (or possibly occupied by someone physically unable to remove or change the battery). Which gives you another clue to track down which apartment it is, but is likely to mean there is no one there to ask. If that is the case, you will have a different problem to solve and you will have to hope that their neighbours, or the building manager, if there is one, might have a key or know some way to contact the owner or tenant to arrange a battery replacement.
The easiest outcome for you is if the resident is there but hasn’t changed the battery because they are physically unable to – you can offer to help and both of you can stop listening to the thing.
I agree. Make a fuss.
The landlord and agent might be just trying to get away with the situation but when you show you know your rights after reading the above, you may get a better response without having to go further to Fair Trading.
If you haven’t already take lots of photos every time it happens – during and after the swarms. Look critically at the photos to make sure they convey how bad it is. That will be evidence to show Fair Trading or Council’s Environmental Health Dept, but also may convey to the agent how ridiculous what they are asking you to put up with is.
There is potential for damage to your belongings too – if there are cracks and spaces where the swarming termites have been coming in, the workers who are living in the walls can come in that way too. Termites also eat other cellulose materials as well as wood so if they come into wardrobes or where it is dark behind shelves etc they will eat things like books, fabrics, boxes and furniture. And depending on the species, surprisingly quickly. I lost my silk wedding dress to them – it was being kept by my mother for sentimental reasons – I think she was more upset about the dress she had lovingly made than the wall they had eaten through to get to it!
Its the regular worker termites that will do that damage and they won’t come into the light, so they will only do it somewhere dark, or where they have built their closed tunnels to protect themselves from light. The tunnels are easily visible, so it shouldn’t be too hard to work out where to check. But its another reason why your home is not in an acceptable state that you pay your rent for.
@scotlandx said:
Right – so you have a group of people who don’t want to give email addresses for receipt of notices, and then when notices of meeting are mailed to them, they don’t get them.This is remarkable.
I suggest you toughen up, and if someone says they didn’t get a notice, too bad. And stop running around after them.
I think you have misunderstood me, but when I explain you will only think it more remarkable. The following explains the situation I was working under – there are many things I now know are wrong and can be changed:
Because our SM said we need a by-law allowing electronic delivery of notices at all, we were posting them to all owners to meet the legal requirements (since we don’t have a noticeboard). Then they weren’t arriving on time. So if I followed your advice and “toughened up” and don’t put the effort into informing people myself as well, no one but me would know to come to the meeting.
I know that multiple people weren’t just claiming that they hadn’t received the notices because I also hadn’t received mine. (Our notices are prepared by me but posted by the SM because she won’t share the details of the Strata Roll – which I now know to also be wrong). I was told that the notices actually had to have arrived with enough days notice, so if they hadn’t we had to postpone the meeting.
There is resistance to passing such a by-law because not everyone has an email address. Apart from one person, I don’t think this is a matter of refusing to supply it – those people don’t have computers or use email at all. If the SM would then only used email for notices, as she said would be the case, it would exclude those without it, who are the older owners.
I could “run around” after our owners, using email, door knocking to collect more email addresses myself, or telling people in person, so that I could inform at least some of them of notices on an unofficial basis, if the mailed copy hasn’t arrived. That hopefully ensures that I have a quorum to hold meetings and, preferably, full attendance by the committee (I also have an ulterior motive in trying to increase attendance and interest in meetings by our chronically apathetic owners and committee. Because with such interest we will have more chance of getting a committee at all again next year. And, maybe, I can pass on this role of secretary….).
But doing the running around is the more annoying because of the costs of the wasted postage that is then functionally redundant.
So the situation was certainly remarkable. And infuriating. And apparently, largely unnecessary……
But thanks to this thread I now know I have been labouring under a multitude of misunderstandings and poor pieces of advice. I now have a number of options for improving things, reducing costs and reducing fuss. (and another reminder not to always trust what the SM says).
Thankyou.
Platform Shoes, In answer to your original question: If you are in NSW, you (or any other member of the public) probably do have the right to view the documents relevant to this matter because councils must supply information about orders and development approvals via GIPA (Government Information (Public Access) Act). A Freedom of Information application, (which will actually be a GIPA application in NSW) is the method by which you claim that right. You may be allowed to print or copy what you are shown.
You can read about GIPA at https://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/access-government-information# and details of how to apply should be on your council’s website. I don’t know about the equivalent laws in other states, but searching for “Freedom of Information” on your council’s website would be a good place to start.
You already received a reply to your complaint when you were told that there were orders to demolish; after that the compliance issue is between the owner and council, not you. I don’t think its reasonable to expect to be sent a confirmation letter about something that is a council matter with someone else.
I don’t understand what you would hope to gain by seeing written confirmation, since you already know the garages now comply. You are unlikely to get much more detail than that. You would be able to see it in writing yourself, but I don’t see how that will help you. There is no need to be concerned whether there will be a written record of the outcome kept, because the matter is recorded in writing in the council property file which will still be there in future if needed for some reason. However, if you really want to see the outcome of the inspection, an FOI application is the route to go at this point.
This is all assuming that simply asking the relevant owners nicely is unlikely to get them to show you their copies of the paperwork that they received?
Scotlandx, Its good to know that I don’t need to postpone a meeting if notices haven’t been received due to delayed post, but it does put me in the ridiculous situation of having to email or door knock everyone to let them know the meeting is on, if the notice and agenda haven’t arrived yet. it can be done, but to all practical (rather than legal) purposes really makes the postage of notices redundant if I have had to communicate with owners some other way anyway. I’d still have to postpone the meeting if we didn’t get a quorum to run the meeting due to the fact no one knew it was on.
I understand your answer is based on legislation but with the changes to the postal system last year, 4 days is not entirely realistic anymore unless you pay for priority mail. The Australia Post website says priority mail has an expected delivery time of 1 to 4 working days and regular mail, 1 to 6 working days.
We have been using priority mail since we postponed the 2 meetings last year (because we thought we had to postpone them – now i know better), but Priority mail costs 50c extra per letter. So now I know, we can go back to regular mail and take our chances that the letters will arrive in time for anyone to know there is a meeting on. (this seems to have some potential for excluding some members, especially non-resident owners or those who wont use email)
When you say one can’t use a noticeboard for general meetings, are you implying one could be used for notice for committee meetings? That would still save the largest chunk of our postage costs.
Can you not get a Strata Noticeboard to post notices so that you comply with the requirements, and email people who would like you to do so for practical purposes (since most people won’t read the noticeboard). If owners don’t want to provide email addresses then they have to rely on the official provision which is the noticeboard. (I am in NSW – maybe requirements are different elsewhere)
Also our Strata Manager says we can get a by-law to allow for electronic delivery of official notices which we are thinking of doing, and I was under the impression that we could then just use email. Is that not correct?
I have been resisting doing the latter because we have several houses without computers or who wont provide an email address and it didn’t seem fair to those people, but the rest of the committee feel that in this day and age email is standard communication and notification by mail is the unusual situation. If banks, government organisations and utilities are using email or the provision of statements and payments on their websites, then it is reasonable for us to replace our paper copies with email too, so they want to get the by-law to allow for electronic communication, or, if we cant do that, a noticeboard (but use unofficial email as well). It would certainly make my job as secretary easier.
As well as the issue of cost, email has the advantage of being fairly immediate. Due to the changes to the postage system we have had to postpone meetings in the past because the notices hadn’t arrived 2 weeks later! (it has happened twice last year). The need to give 2-3 weeks notice of a meeting to ensure everyone gets their notice in time means that it is not possible to call a meeting quickly to deal with an issue. I think that in NSW Strata Laws says we need to give 3 days notice after the agenda arrive, so a meeting theoretically could be called in less than a week if it weren’t for the need to send the notices by snail mail.
It turns out that one of the reasons I have seen some drop in the kids use of our drive is that they have moved to using the drive of the complex next door and sadly, there has been an accident and a child hurt there earlier this week. Not a bad one, but enough to be very distressing to the driver, child, and childs family. The car was moving slowly and the child hurtled down the hill into its side and flew off the scooter. (The drive next door is parallel to, and has the same hazards as ours.)
I wrote previously that its not a matter of harmless fun among the kids, but physically dangerous activity regardless whether there are cars present or not. Once you add the fact that there are blind corners both onto the main drive and then into many of the individual lots, as well as a tendency of some drivers to speed (by that I mean well over our limit of only 5km) it becomes very dangerous. I think that residents should have the right to be able to manoeuvre out of their own lots without the risk of hitting a child. Or a child hurtling out of nowhere, on a scooter without brakes, paying no attention to what cars may be doing and ploughing into their car.
The complaints I’ve had from owners have not been because they didn’t want kids using common property for fun activities, but because they don’t want a child hurt. The by-law against kids using dangerous common property unsupervised is the one I can apply to the situation to try and stop it. (There is nothing stopping the parents coming out and checking the kids are behaving safely.)
The situation cant be compared to studies of increased awareness by drivers of adult cyclists using roads for two reasons: One, kids under 10 simply don’t have the ability to assess the risks or have the insight to imagine what could happen in a situation, or react appropriately. They are unpredictable and it would be unreasonable to expect them to be anything else. The example of cyclists on roads relies in part on the cyclists behaving safely and predictably as well as the cars. The second reason that the studies don’t apply is that the results are based on STATISTICS and show accident rates DROPPING – we live in a specific case and don’t want ANY accidents.
The idyllic image of a multi-use driveway open space simply isn’t realistic. We wont be holding our christmas party there as its steep and uncomfortable and generally an unpleasant place to hang out. We’ll in the BBQ area with the child’s playground next to it.
But back to my original question in response to the comment that ScotlandX made that insurers wouldn’t pay if the OC have not stopped the activities. Is what i have done so far adequate? Or do we have to keep taking it further? And what would further be?
So our Strata Manager who says only she can see the Strata Roll for privacy reasons is wrong?
I have had my suspicions about her “advice” this one.