Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
Therefore, the owners corporation has the duty to maintain common property, hence the OC obliged to fix the tv system.
Not strictly true. Paragraph 3 of Section 106 of the NSW Act, “Duty of owners corporation to maintain and repair property”, says this:
This section does not apply to a particular item of property if the owners corporation determines by special resolution that—
(a) it is inappropriate to maintain, renew, replace or repair the property, and
(b) its decision will not affect the safety of any building, structure or common property in the strata scheme or detract from the appearance of any property in the strata scheme.
In other words, the owners corp could decide by special resolution not to replace or repair the TV antenna wiring and if more than 75 per cent of owners (or those voting at a general meeting) agree, then the system could be dumped or altered.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
… with NBN and everyone accessing broadcast services that way, we are wondering about closing down the barely functioning TV aerial system.
Your Foxtel client residents can access the service via NBN. I switched to Foxtel’s online service about a year ago and sent the set-top box back. It’s a lot cheaper and the only drawback is that I can’t record Foxtel shows, but I can watch them via the “on demand” service.
If residents want the free-to-air digital service, perhaps you can cable them individually. I only use the digital free-to-air signal so I can record three shows – that is, there are only three free-to-air shows that I want to record, and that’s only because I want to whizz through the ads.Otherwise I watch them on the various channels’ catch-up services (although I have to say that Channel Nine’s practise of putting an ad break after every single scene of “Something About Pam” is killing the show for me).
But it seems to me if you don’t have a strata management statement, then you can do what you (or the majority of owners) want. I don’t know of any legal requirement to provide free-to-air TV via and aerial.
Present the owners with all the options, including a breakdown of the actual costs it will add to each apartment’s levies to reinstall free to air for everyone – remembering to explain that because of the way levies work, even if individual owners owners don’t want it, they still have to pay for it.
You may find you have an overwhelming majority in favour of dispensing with the antenna altogether.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
I’m going to preface this by saying you need to get professional legal advice on this. The reason I say that is that Section 6 of the Strata Schemes Development Act seems to suggest that you either have to abide by the conditions of your Strata Management Statement (the document under which your strata schemes was formed) or update the SMS accordingly.
As for maintaining services, this is what section 6 says:
Obligations relating to an easement for the provision of services
(1) If an easement for services is created to burden or benefit a part strata parcel, the pipes or apparatus to which the easement relates must be maintained in good order and be repaired:
(a) by the owners corporation, or by another person shown in the instrument by which the easement is created, or in any instrument in the approved form by which the easement is varied, as having responsibility for the matters,It goes on to say:
(2) If an owners corporation or another person:
(a) fails to carry out a responsibility imposed by subclause (1), and
(b) at least 7 days have passed since the failure first arose, the owners corporation or other person may take all lawful steps necessary to ensure that the responsibility is carried out.Now, that refers to an easement for the provision of services through a private lot and would probably apply to the daisy-chain cables that, in this instance, have been cut by various renovations.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Strata Schemes Management act defines “services” as including “telephone, internet, radio and television services.”
What does that mean? To be honest, I’m not sure but it seems to suggest that if your SMS says TV services will be provided, then you have either alter the SMS or provide the services.
Call your lawyers or just find a way so that everyone in the block can get free-to-air TV services which is really what this is all about.
By the way, the development Act seems to suggest that the terms of the SMS must be reviewed every five years. Does anyone actually do that?
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Just to clarify (or maybe confuse), Section 103 of the Act says the provision of legal services has to be approved at a general meeting. Whether an EGM is required to discontinue those services is another matter.
In fact, you might argue that the legal services agreed on aren’t being discontinued, but they are simply being provided by another firm. Your new lawyers will surely advise.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Our strata manager suspects that there is some law or requirement that multi-storey apartment buildings must provide a free-to-air cabling system? Does anyone know if that is correct?
Isn’t your strata manager supposed to know if this is the case? We’ll look into it.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
If The Hood would care to get in touch, I have a couple of journalists on hold who’d love to dig into this story.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Are you talking about the 10 year capital works fund plan?
D’OH! I completely misread that and thought the OP was referring to 10-year management contracts.
Section 80 of the Act says schemes must, by law, have a 10-year maintenance plan and it must be reviewed at least every five years. As for enforcement, any owner could take their committee to NCAT seeking orders that they comply or, presumably, face removal and replacement with a compulsory manager.
Section 81 merely says that schemes have to estimate how much money they want to put into the funds. Therefore a scheme could ignore potential big ticket items like lift replacement and instead agree to maintain a small fund for minor works but reserve the right to apply for strata loans or issue special levies as and when they are required.
The importance of this is that it is discussed and minuted so the future purchasers know they may be up for repairs of equipment worn out by previous owners, some of whom may be selling out before the bid ticket items come around. This is an issue that should be raised and minuted at your AGM, if only for the sake of transparency.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Generally speaking, if the problem is caused by or on common property, it’s a CP issue, but if it emanates from another lot, even if it passes through CP, it’s the responsibility of the other owner
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
I wonder if we are sharing the same appalling strata manager.
You can always message each other privately by going on the other person’s post and clicking on “Send a Message” on the left
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
I’m still not sure if a committee can validly overturn the decisions made by a general meeting. It flies in the face of the law that says owners at a general meeting can overturn the decisions of the committee. But I guess you’d find out pretty quickly when the committee tried to sack the lawyer.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
How about proposing to the committee that you narrow it down to two preferred candidates and have an online plebiscite among owners? Just put an item on the next committee agenda “Vacancy on committee” and take it from there.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
I think there’s a general principle that decisions made at a general meeting can only be unmade at a general meeting. However, unless their contract with the lawyer has specific terms for dismissal, there’s nothing to stop the committee identifying a replacement in advance and sacking the previous lawyers at the same general meeting as the owners appoint the new ones.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
The law says you have to give seven days’ notice. However, you have to take into account weekends, public holidays and postage. So in reality you have to allow two weeks from when the notice is sent out. Three weeks seems excessive but there may be special circumstances.
If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Strata managing agents’ contracts are limited to three years at a time by law in NSW. For now, you should talk to your neighbours and committee members about what they expect from your strata managers and how that measures up to the services you get. Then take the results of that conversation to the strata managers and ask them how they plan to bring their service up to scratch.If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.