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SCA are offering a three-day course on qualifying to be a strata manager with no prior educational requirements (apparently your educational requirements are fulfilled by completing the course) and you can do it online.
How hard can it be?
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Who issued the notice? Surely the committee would have addressed this before it was sent out. Or is this one owner getting the strata manager to do his or her dirty work?
My advice? Tell them to stop being rificulous and take it to Fair Trading and NCAT if they feel so strongly.
Meanwhile get permission from the committee for the pot plants and worm farm to remain exactly where they are. And gee up some support from other owners too.
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Having said that, if your building’s board adopted the strata by-laws as your by-laws, then they would apply.
Are parking spaces common (company) property? This all seems very strange and the threat seems very petty. Seek advice.
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Assuming you’re in NSW, my guess is that unless it says otherwise in your strata management plan or your by-laws, all owners are responsible collectively for all intercoms – i.e. the people in the front building would have to contribute to repairs for those in the rear building. The only obvious exception would be if the residents in the affected unit had damaged the intercom in some way.
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Company Title comes under company law and has nothing to do with strata law.
I strongly recommend that you contact one of our sponsors, Strata Answers, for initial advice and another, Sachs Gerace Broome, for legal advice if required.
Just be aware that company title issues have to be run in the Supreme Court (and I think any fines might have to be pursued there too).
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I’ve had a quick scan of Qld strata law and I can’t findthe clauses I expected, meaning the Body Corporate can enter lot property to undertake work – but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.
In other states, theses clauses exist, but that doesn’t mean they have the right to just wander in and set up their gear. They need your permission and if you refuse, they have to get orders from the state tribunal. I would be surprised if something like this didn’t exist in QLD.
Assuming for a moment it did, you could talk to your management and tell them that they are going to have to come up with some sort of compensation or you are going to block access every time they want to use your lot and they will have to seek orders at QCAT.
What form that compensation might take is up to you – but it should also be allied to strict time limits or you might find ladders and scaffolding parked there permanently.
Meanwhile, I suggest you contact the Unit Owners Association Queensland and/or the state government’s advice page HERE if only to find out exactly what your rights are.
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It would help greatly if you could explain why you think they have issued you with a breach.
I don’t think there is a universally applicable legal definition of the word “use” so you’ll have to help us out.
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This is an area where your diplomatic skills are more important that your accounting abilities. Your biggest challenge is going to be getting the Chair to relinquish some of her power – after that it’s not vital for you to examine the books forensically – just let it be known that there are checks and balances.
Regarding Flame Tree’s comments about being aware of your state’s strata laws, one of them, as mentioned above, is that the committee must appoint a secretary. That is your pathway into oversight.
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What you were told 10 years ago isn’t necessarily going to hold water (no pun intended) when it takes a decade to get a result.
To be clear, I have never heard yet of a defects settlement that has covered the full amount of the cost of remediation etc. That’s not fair but it’s how these things work.
So let’s accept there is a short-fall of some kind but the OC still has to fix the defects. But the money for emergency accommodation and storage has to come from somewhere. If everyone is affected then everyone will pay, one way or another, either directly or through their levies.
Getting individual owners to pay for their own emergency accommodation is actually quite smart because it gives you the opportunity to limit your spending if you want to, by not having to contribute through your levies to the cost of accommodation for a larger family, for instance, or one with more expensive tastes.
As for the storage and removals issue, I think you would have a case to take to NCAT that the Owners Corporation still has a duty of care, regardless of the level of the pay-out it received, and that your additional needs should be covered.
I’m not saying you would win, that’s a roll of the dice, but I’m pretty certain of one thing; making additional demands on the owners corp at this time will make you pretty unpopular with most of your neighbours.
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Flame Tree wrote:
You as do other owners have full access to your records but typically need to pay a fee to the professional manager to see these at there premises, as well as pay per page to get copies.
Which why I suggested Getting There becomes an officer – then they won’t have to pay and scrutinising receipts will be part of their role, rather than seen as almost an accusation of some wrongdoing.
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The word “must” doesn’t appear in strata law often enough for my tastes, but it does turn up in section 107 of the Victorian Owners Corporation Act (below) saying that the strata committee must appoint a secretary.
If I were you, I would nominate myself for the role secretary, assuming you are elected on to the committee at the AGM (and you might want to keep this plan under your hat until the first commitee meeting after the AGM). FYI: In Victoria and NSW, the office-bearers are elected by the committee, not the whole ownership at the AGM.
That will give you a level of oversight and control without having to challenge every decision just to find out what’s going on. Tread lightly, though. If the chair sees this as a challenge, she might wrangle the votes to elect herself in both roles.
The role of secretary in a strata committee is potentially the most powerful if the incumbent chooses it to be. He or she calls the meetings, sets the agendas and issues the minutes, as defined by the Act.
Regarding the strata manager charges, it depends very much of the kind of contract you have with the SM. If it’s a more expensive “all-in” contract, where you pay a fee for complete service, then the strata manager is not really being reasonable. If it’s a cheaper (up front, at least) “Schedule B” contract, where the strata manager can charge for every letter opened and phone call made or received, then you are stuck with that until the contract runs out.
107. Secretary of committee
The members of the committee must appoint a member of the committee to be the secretary of the committee.NB: This post was originally answered under the mistaken assumption that “Getting There” was in NSW – now corrected.
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The Owners Corp could grant permission for the fences subject to signed agreement on certain conditions established in a by-law, such as (for example) …
- The agreement must be renewed every year at the AGM
- The fences will be properly maintained by the respective owners, including fences that back on to common property.
- At no point wil the owners use the existence of the fences as an argument in any claim to resume common property into their lot.
- The fences will be removed, as appropriate for each lot, PRIOR to sale of the unit.
- Any breach of this agreement will result in the fences being removed at the lot owners’ expense.
If you explain to the pet owners that these conditions are to protect the Owners Corp from future owners, not them, they should be amenable.
And if they’re not. just say no.
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This is not unusual – it has to do with columns of air being disturbed by the renovation work – but that doesn’t mean you have to put up with it. Report it to your strata committee or strata manager (water pipes outside the lot are common property) and ask them to employ a plumber or a hydraulic engineer who really, really knows what they’re doing. Every plumber will tell you they can fix this – some can, many can’t.
By the way, there is evidence around that allowing water hammer to go unchecked can damage pipework and connections, leading to other much more serious issues.
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I wonder if there is any possibility that the cleaner’s employer is also in some way complicit.
Cleaner: “Ooh, those pot plants are lovely.”
Employer: “Just take one … we kind of own them … because they are on common property …”
I would be sending a letter to the strata committee stating that you have seen an unnamed employee of an unnamed resident stealing a pot plant from common property and that the resident has refused to have the plant returned. Can the committee investigate the potential for installing security cameras to protect other residents from theft.
That should put the caterpillars among the pot plants.
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