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@Waratah said:
I’ve seen mention of websites that some strata schemes use to communicate with owners and residents (though couldn’t name one without doing a search) and wonder whether some of them might use them to post business papers routinely.I’m sure our sponsors Stratabox will be all over this.
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Have you asked to be included in the mail-out?
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For Major work you require a special resolution by-law as outlined in Section 108. This will require you to convince a 75 percent majority of owners voting at an AGM or EGM that your plans are sound and safe and to give an undertaking to maintain and repair common property involved in the structural change. You will also have to pay for the by-law and the cost of the meeting if it is an Extraordinary General Meeting.
I would recommend discussing this with your strata committee and/or strata manager from the beginning so that they can endorse and support your application.
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You are required by law to have a 10-year forward maintenance plan (revised every five years) and to have enough funds in the kitty to service it.
That’s your stating point – do you have more money than you need in your maintenance (formerly ‘sinking’) fund?
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@LawoftheLand said:
Can the S/C vote upon enhancements to a Lot owner’s private property at the expense of the O/C? And if so, wouldn’t that enhancement set a precedent with other Lot owner’s who would then expect the O/C pay for similar work?This probably comes under your by-laws plus section 120 (2) of the Act (below).
Under the standard by-law (12 in the current model by-laws), the owner or occupier of a lot “must not, without the prior written approval of the owners corporation, maintain within the lot anything visible from outside the lot that, viewed from outside the lot, is not in keeping with the rest of the building.”
You probably have this by-law or something similar.
Under Section 120 (2), the owners corp (or strata committee) can carry out work that should have been done by an owner and then charge them for it. FYI: The significant word is “may”, meaning they have the option to do the work and the option to charge for it.
120 Owners corporation may carry out work required to be carried out by others
(2) Work required to be carried out under term or condition of by-law
If a person who is the owner … tenant or occupier of a lot in the strata scheme fails to carry out work that is required to be carried out by the person under a term or condition of a by-law of the scheme, the owners corporation may carry out the work and recover the cost of carrying out the work from that person, the owner of the lot (if the person is not the owner) or any person who, after the work is carried out, becomes the owner of that lot.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.
@chesswood said:
So whose fault is the blockage?There’s a difference between fault and responsibility. You are responsible for everything you own.
It might not be your fault if your parked car’s brakes fail and it rolls into the back of someones Porsche, but you’ll find you are responsible when it comes to an insurance claim.
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@newlsie said:
Four owners lodged with Fair Trading but the SC refused to mediate. I take exception to this inefficient use of our money.OK, you have taken the first step and now you can go to NCAT seeking orders to compel the committee to act, sack them, replace them with a strata manager or whatever you and your neighbours deem appropriate.
You are halfway there. Why stop now? Click here for the form.
You might want to consult a strata lawyer first, though.
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I have to confess this one has slipped past me. I remember it being mooted but don’t recall anyone ever announcing it was law.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has taken a company title issue to their district court and how they fared.
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@dech said:
All plants were recently removed from an established 50sq. mtr garden bed. There has been no special or ordinary resolution even touching on the topic and no agenda or minutes from the Strata Committee on any topic in years.So how do you know who’s responsible and why they did it?
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@Waratah said:
Do other strata schemes make their business papers available to owners prior to a committee meeting – either by email or via a website?Not sure what you mean by ‘business papers” but as an owner you are entitled to see all correspondence to, from and on behalf of the owners corporation.
However, to send copies of everything out to everyone with every agenda would be time-consuming, expensive and wasteful.
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@Errol said:
So can you tell me if this is now actual, operational lawIt’s there in the Act. See for yourself.
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@Erte said:
If a building has retained a strata management company and has a “case worker” (for want of a better term), i.e. the person I’ve been referring to as our “strata manager”, what exactly is their role? And how is that connected with the strata committee?This depends on the committee and the manager. Basically the strata manager is there to look after the financial and legal obligations of the building if the owners don’t want to do it themselves. They collect the levies and pay the bills.
The owners can collectively decide how much or how little involvement they have with the running of their building and usually do this as a committee.
Theoretically, the strata manager takes his or her instructions from the committee, and the committee takes its instructions from the owners in a general meeting.
In reality, the strata manager often (but not always) advises the committee on what it should be doing, they get on with the small stuff, and once a year the committee takes major proposals to the owners at an AGM for approval.
In short, the role of the strata manager is defined by how active and knowledgeable the committee is. In many cases, in NSW, at least, the strata manager just goes ahead and gets things done under powers delegated by the committee, although the committee can resume any or all of those powers as and when it pleases.
To put it another way, if the SC is functioning in a customary/proper manner, what is it that the contact at the strata management company should be doing or contributing?
I’d hesitate to say any such relationship was ‘customary’ – there are so many different ways of going about this. It depends on the committee and the manager.
However, it’s common, especially in small schemes for the strata manager to do most of the work with the committee chipping in occasionally on specific issues or projects (which the SM then manages). Some schemes never have committee meetings but instead relay the outcomes of informal chats that the SM then wraps up in a notice or agenda to the owners.
In bigger schemes, the strata manager can operate almost like a company secretary, making sure the decisions made by the committee are valid and legal and then expediting them through contact with service providers and tradespeople.
I think it’s perhaps telling, in relation to my building, that there are six owners and of the three who are on the SC at present only one of those is actually resident in the building. I wonder if this may have something to do with the delegating of functions to a professional and with certain aspects, such as the garden, being allowed to slide.
I’d say this has everything to do with sliding standards. Your committee is dominated by people who don’t live in the building and can’t see what’s going on, with the numbers made up by someone who either doesn’t know they can change things or doesn’t care.
In a small scheme, the chances that your committee is dominated by people who don’t want to spend any money they don’t have to is increased. Simple answer, work out some improvements, cost them then get yourself on to the committee and push them through.
Getting back to your original question, the strata manager isn’t going to do this kind of thing unless the committee tells them to. So the committee is the key.
And be careful that you aren’t confusing the role of a strata manager with a building (or building services) manager. The roles can overlap but the former is much more about paperwork while the latter is, literally, more hands on and nuts and bolts orientated.
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Looking at your other posts, on your maintenance fund and on your cladding inspection, I think your strata manager may be over-servicing the scheme, trusting that the BMC will support his appointment because the minority stakeholders get a lot of benefit for very little outlay.
I think you should get your committee to agree to an audit of your services by an independent expert, including a review of contracts and the circumstances under which they were made. There’s a company called Strata Answers who provide this kind of service (for a fee, of course).
But it sounds to me that you are being baffled with BS from people who may well be feathering their own nests at your residential owners’ expense.
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Most of this comes under Schedule 1 of the Act .To put it simply both you and the person whose proxy you are holding can attend the meeting but if the owner votes then you as proxy holder can’t.I don’t know where you have read that you can’t speak if the owners speaks – it certainly doesn’t say that on this, the official proxy form, which is what should be used for appointing any proxies.The question of who is allowed to speak is tricky since there is nothing in the Act that would prohibit both the owner and the proxy holder from speaking but most strata schemes would quite justifiably get annoyed if you both tried to speak.So you should respect that, at least, especially in the unlikely event of the scheme having “standing orders” that have been adopted by by-law, regulating how the meeting should be conducted.Tenants can be asked to leave the meeting if they are attending purely as tenants, but not if they are there as proxy holders (see Section 21(3) below).21 Tenants at meetings(1) A tenant who has been notified in accordance with this Act to the owners corporation as a tenant of a lot in the strata scheme is entitled to attend a meeting but is not entitled to vote at a meeting unless the tenant is the holder of a duly appointed proxy.
(2) A tenant is not entitled to address a meeting unless authorised to do so by a resolution of the owners corporation.
(3) The owners corporation may, at any meeting or for the purpose of all meetings, determine that tenants (other than tenants who hold duly appointed proxies) are not entitled to be present when the following matters are being discussed or determined:
(a) financial statements and auditor’s reports,
(b) levying of contributions,
(c) recovery of unpaid contributions,
(d) a strata renewal proposal under Part 10 of the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 or any related matter,
(e) any other financial matter specified by the regulations for the purposes of this clause.
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