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If the shoe was in the other foot and there was a majority vote against the special levy could NCAT overturn this to allow the owners Corp to function properly and fulfill their obligations?
There are provisions under section 232(2) of the Act for owners to seek orders requiring the strata scheme (in effect, the other owners) to fulfil its statutory duties and these could include repairing and maintaining common property.
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It’s actually quite usual. It all depends on location and distances.What a shame that Belinda can’t respond to some of the people who’ve taken the time and trouble to answer her question and give us more details. She must be trapped in the garage, methinks.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.
There is another course of action (or inaction) available to you – and I’m not recommending this, just laying it out for your consideration.
You could write to the strata manager or committee and say that since the gate was not operating correctly (the 60-second delay) and was not properly dressed with reflective surfaces, you are not prepared to accept total responsibility for the accident.
In fact, you see their failure to fulfil their statutory duty to maintain and repair common property as being the major contributing factor in this and, as such, they should make a claim against their own building insurance.
However, you are happy to sit down and mediate an equitable outcome, at a mutually agreed time and with an independent arbiter.
Something like that may cool their jets a little and give you time to work something out. Paying the excess on their claim may be a fair result. Oh, and have a look at changing your car insurance – the one you have is clearly not helpful.
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The post refers to a “gate”, which I assume means an entrance from the street to the whole property, rather than a “door” which would give access to the building.
You know what they say about “assume”. It’s quite possible that the gate is the vehicle access to the block, i.e. the building. If you look at Austman’s post below, you will see that if there is no other pedestrian exit within specified proximity, then the gate has to also function as an emergency exit. That would be an unusual set of circumstances but not impossible.
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First make sure there is no by-law that allows exclusive use of the laundry chutes by this company.
If not, there’s probably no need to go down the fraud or restraint of trade road. Propose to the committee that they ensure that all owners have access to the laundry chute.
When they refuse or fail to comply, apply to Fair Trading for mediation with a view to action at NCAT to force them to do so, under section 232(2).
If there is a by-law, you could challenge it at NCAT on the basis that it is “harsh, unconscionable or oppressive” given that it favours one commerical interest and its clients to the detriment of others.
It may be worth you and other owners contacting a strata lawyer to issue a legal letter. If you are going it alone, contact Marrickville Legal Centre which provides free strata legal advice for the whole of NSW for those who can’t afford it themselves.
FYI, the term OC/BC probably means Owners Corporation or Body Corporate (the old term) which will be represented by your strata committee.
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A couple of observations. It is not unusual for rental agents to give permission for parking and other privileges when they are not entitled to do so, to sweeten the deal for their tenants.. They may even charge for it without having the authority to do so.
Your first issue is to establish what rights you have over that space (if any) and that will be in your rental agreement and in the strata plan for the scheme. If it’s common property, they will probably need written permission to park there and you can raise that with the strata committee or strata manager.
If that doesn’t get the result you want, then ask for a rent reduction due to the fact that this neighbour’s vehicle is blocking your view, your daylight and your access. This is a good tactic for getting everyone’s attention.
And don’t be alarmed by bullies banging on your door. The fact that they do that suggests they know they don’t have a leg to stand on and they are hoping to intimidate you into allowing them to breach the rules. Just shut the door in their face and if they don’t go away, call the police.
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So the laundry chute possibly belongs to the commercial OC/BC as part of their common property. And if so the residential OC/BC lot owners would not have access to it.
And the serviced apartment operators might feel very territorial about it if residential owners were, say, running Airbnbs in the building in contravention of the block’s development approval.
I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here, but I could see it happening somewhere.
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Building insurance generally doesn’t cover wear and tear, deterioration or defects. Even if it did, and if the balcony is your responsibility, then it wouldn’t be covered anyway.
But are you sure the balcony is lot responsibility? I’m interested to know how that came to be the case, as it’s quite unusual.
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If the car park door forms part of a Required Exit (and that’s an IF), it must be possible to operate it in the manner specified by the NCC/BCA. That means no keys.
Fascinating. This is all news to me. Is it reasonable to assume that the “Required Exit” scenario implies that the garage gate is the only available pedestrian exit? BTW, I have also seen garage gates that can be operated manually by chains in an emergency.
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You have to love the push button option. So I sneak in to your garage, then, when I have looted all the cars of anything worth stealing, I push a button so I can steal one of the vehicles with which to escape with my plunder.
You don’t have to prove that there isn’t a regualtion demanding a push button. The othe side has to prove that there is (and I suspect that the bush lawyer who told them this is talking through a hole in their hat).
Your key system sounds fine to me.
Put it in one of those locks that they use for Airbnb keys and then give everyone the combination. If they are too stupid to remember where they wrote the code, they probably shouldn’t be driving.
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My question of you therefore, Jimmy, is: Can “the Committee” submit motion(s) for the Agenda for general meetings?
Notwithstanding ScotlandX’s comprehensive response, the simple solution for all schemes would be for committee motions to be proposed by the secretary, who is a person.
I can see how, theoretically, a committee dominated by non-owners – your “otherwise non-entitled persons” – might push motions through. But if that’s a problem, the owners should stop electing non-owners to their committees, certainly when they might form a majority.
This all sounds a bit bush-lawyery and hypothetical to me. Are there any real life examples?
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Here are two definitions of double-glazing from reliable sources: Build.com.au and Action Glass (among other commerial suppliers).
What your strata committee is referring to is Secondary Glazing which is fitted on top of existing windows. I would challenge them to prove that what the Act is talking about is the more widely recognised version of double glazing and not the admittedly frequent misuse of the term for commercial purposes.
So you are trying to do something that is less significant than what the Act allows. And the way you challenge them is to request mediation at Fair Trading where, hopefully, someone will explain what the Act actually means.
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The owners corporation has a duty to maintain and repair common property. You don’t need to have a general meeting every time you need to fix something, especially when it’s already been agreed.
It’s different if you are adding to or taking away from CP, or there is a huge expense that would blow the agreed annual budget by more than 10 per cent (I think). But that is clearly not the case here.
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I had a look at the available material on this and there’s nothing much in the NT Act except that they unpaid levies are considered a debt that can be pursued through a tribunal if it’s below $10k, then you go to court, and ultimately the Supreme Court if the amount is enough.
The details are very slender on how much you can charge for the cost of debt recovery – one article even warns that the cost of the bailifs might exceed what the tribunals or courts are prepared to order as compensation.
FYI, in NSW and Victoria, you can charge the reasonable costs of debt recovery to the debtor, which has led to strata schemes employing specialist strata debt collectors as their services are effectively free.
Regarding the NT, this is definitely one of these cases where you would talk to an experienced strata lawyer before you committed to anything.
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