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You’ve put yourselves in a very tricky position here, albeit by trying to do the right thing. Strictly speaking, you should have taken action to force the Owners Corp to fix or replace the windows and you have no legal basis that I can think of on which to refuse to pay your share of others’ improvements.
Personally, I’d be tempted to run a case through Fair Trading to demand that the OC pays for your repairs. Your claim should be based on it being an emergency and they were negligent in their legal duty to maintain and repair common property. If you have evidence that you made many requests that were ignored, so much the better.
I’m not saying you will win but somewhere in the mediation you might get some sort of allowance made for the fact that you did the wrong thing for the right reason and they now want to do the right thing for the wrong reason.
If you are lucky, you might even get a ruling from the CTTT that the Owners Corp has to fix everyone’s windows but you don’t have to pay your share – it’s a long shot but the CTTT is a strange and illogical beast.
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It’s legal – just – but is it right? I don’t think so. Firstly, the minutes of the AGM can’t be approved or otherwise until the next General Meeting, so it kind of makes sense that they aren’t sent out until just before … but then how are to people who weren’t at the meeting to know what was decided?
But this building manager is only the employee of the Owners, not the other way round and he has to do what they collectively want. So this is what you do, at your next EC meeting (you do have EC meetings, don’t you?) you agree that in future a summary of all General Meeting and EC meeting decisions will be sent out to all owners within two weeks of the meeting. In fact the minutes of the EC meetings (not general meetings) have to be sent out within 14 days by law.
Then you order the manager that the next AGM will be held in the evening at a time that suits the majority of owners rather than them.
If he refuses, sack him. The tail must not wag the dog.
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OK, I tracked down an earlier discussion which is quite informative. This is one bit of legislation you need to know, informatio supplied by StrataGuru Whale:
- The cameras should not invade resident’s rights to privacy in their units, so avoid positions that look directly at entry doors and windows;
- Compliance with the NSW Workplace Surveillance Act (2005) requires that Owners Corporation’s (O/C) and Residents provide advice of the surveillance to all contractors that they engage to work on the property. Our O/C covers that by placing a small CCTV symbol followed by a brief note on the bottom of all Work Orders that it issues.
You can read all about that HERE: http://www.flatchat.com.au/forum/another-day-in-paradise/surveillance
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It’s one of those weird ones that has lawyers adjusting their briefs (the legal equivalent of ‘girding their loins’) in gleeful anticipation.
Easy bits first: the nude swimmer will be breaking any by-law you might have about being appropriately dressed while on Common Property.
But then you have that wobbly area between privacy laws and indecent exposure. For instance, if a man stands at his window in the nude and a woman across the road stares at him long enough to realise he’s naked, and they both scream at the same time, who committed the offense? The same question might apply to who is offended most – the skinny dipper or the person watching their nude frolics?
And in your case, presumably there is a facility for viewing these CCTV feeds so the question is, by whom and under what circumstances? And then there’s the whole social media catastrophe – if one of your residents accidentally exposes themselves and it ends up on YouTube, your EC may just as well hand the sinking fund over to their lawyer right away.
The critical answer is the positioning and power of the camera – near enough to see what’s going on but far enough away not to offend either the viewer or the viewed would be the ideal compromise. And all of this is covered by privacy laws, rather than strata law. I’ll go and find the relevant bits … just as soon as I’ve had a cold shower.
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None that I know of. Never heard of a legal obligation to film people in the pool. Tell them that unless they can quote the law to which they refer they need to re-consider the approval because it has been done of false pretenses. They will, however, have to put up signs warning residents and guests that they are on video. And they need to be very careful about how much detail viewers can see and who has access to the feeds and recordings.
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OK, this is as much as I have been able to glean. As far as Fair Trading and Strata Community Australia (the strata managers) are concerned, the OC has to repair damage done in effecting repairs to common property but doesn’t have to pay for repairs required by the original failure of common property. That’s their policy and that’s why it’s part of the “who’s responsible” document that they and others in the industry jointly formulated.
However, talking to lawyers, it seems there are other principles involved here, such as common law. If you think you can prove that the damage to your lot was the result of Owners Corp negligence, you can ask them to pay. If they refuse, and you think it’s worth all the hassle, you can go go to your District Court and make a claim there.
And this is where we may have been getting confused – assuming that Fair Trading, the CTTT and strata managers are the final arbiters on this. They’re not (see Peter C’s posting above). If you aren’t happy with the response, from your strata manager, there’s clearly little point in taking it to Fair Trading because they are in agreement on this. However there’s always the District Court and the Supreme Court beyond that (if the cost of the repairs merit it).
It feels like this policy is designed to weed out opportunistic claims against the Owners Corp, such as getting your ceiling repainted because of a tiny patch of damp in the corner. But it’s not the be-all and end-all of the law – it’s just a guideline.
Is it right, fair or logical? That is a whole other issue. However, even if your executive committee, strata manager,Fair Trading and the CTTT will probably bounce your claim for repairs to damage caused by the initial flaw, at least there are other avenues if you feel strongly enough that you’ve been hard done by.
The best answer may be just to get a decent home and contents insurance policy and let them deal with it.
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I would really like to hear from someone in the CTTT if this is the case. It makes no sense to me and cuts across all the priciples of collective responsibility wrapped up in the strata act. Further investigation required.
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The simplest way to respond is to ask the other owner to allow access for you and you meter readers. If they refuse or delay, explain that they have done work on common property without proper permission and they could be liable to undo the work they’ve done at their own expense.
It’s hard to be too specific without know what parts of this garage or door are Common Property and I would keep the threat up your sleeve until such times as they prove to be unreasonable but if you need to, this is the relevant section of the Act:
116 Owners, occupiers and other persons not to interfere with structure of lot or services to lot
(1) An owner, mortgagee or covenant chargee in possession (whether in person or not), lessee or occupier of a lot must not do anything or permit anything to be done on or in relation to that lot so that:
(a) any support or shelter provided by that lot for another lot or common property is interfered with, or
(b) the passage or provision of water, sewage, drainage, gas, electricity, garbage, artificially heated or cooled air, heating oil and other services (including telephone, radio and television services) through or by means of any pipes, wires, cables or ducts for the time being in the lot is interfered with.
(2) The owner of a lot must not alter the structure of the lot without giving to the owners corporation, not later than 14 days before commencement of the alteration, a written notice describing the proposed alteration.
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Two-unit strata plans are the hardest to manage because it’s always one person’s opinion against the other’s. There are legal avenues you could explore through Fair Trading and the CTTT but they are long, arduous and even if you get the result you want, it will be at the expense of your relations with your nearest neighbour.
You could try the softly, softly approach and say:”let’s assume you’re not the noisiest people in the world and we’re not the most noise sensitive” and see where you get. Invite them to turn the “dumb waiter” (is that a dishwasher?) on and come into your unit and hear how loud it is. The same goes for scraping chairs.
If need be, think about going to free mediation at a Community Justice Centre (https://www.cjc.nsw.gov.au/cjc/com_justice_index.html).
If that fails and you have a by-law that forbids interfering with the “peaceful enjoyment of another lot” and they are running loud domestic equipment late at night, they are in breach. If they’ve installed timber or tiled floors while you were away, and that is causing a noise problem, they are in breach too.
So check your by-laws, then ask them what they can do so they aren’t in breach (like run their equipment at reasonable times take off their shoes, and put rubber or felt tips (available at any hardware stores) on their furniture.
At the end of the day, if it becomes unbearable, you may have to take the issue to Fair Trading and ask them to issue a Notice To Comply which carries a fine if the problem continues.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.
Have a look at what your by-laws say about noise and “the peaceful enjoyment” of your lot. If there is a by-law to that effect, then you want to warn your landlord that they need to pursue this as a matter of urgency. If your neighbours are in breach of the by-law, they are in breach of their lease and the landlord is responsible for the noise issue too.
But being realistic, I would be talking to the landlord about letting you out of your lease early in exchange for you not dragging them to Fair Trading and the CTTT to get a reduction in rent backdated to your first complaint PLUS early release from your lease.
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Just to be clear, there’s not much you can do right away unless you have 75 percent of owners behind you. However, if you do have the majority then the process is quite simple.
1. Get the signatures of 25% of owners to call an Extraordinary Meeting to declare all the EC seats vacant.
2. Get the 75 % vote required to do so.
3. Vote to reduce the size of the EC to three.
4. get your supporters to vote for your two candidate plus the least objectionable of the three incumbents.OR
Wait till your next AGM when you can follow steps 3 and 4 with a simple majority (you don’t need the 75% vote).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.
This is a tricky one. If people don’t have the money, they either have to raise it or sell. What they can’t do is shift their debt on to their neighbours. However, many banks will treat a share of strata renovations as if they were a loan for a renovation for a home. It protects their investment (your mortgage) and has an outcome that they know will support the value of the property. They need to either talk to their current lender or look at refinancing. If they’re not prepared to do either of these things, then they will face statutory penalty interest on the unpaid special levy.
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Depends on the strata manager and the expectations of the EC. Some strata managers could, indeed, just print off the latest spread sheet … other may be less technically savvy or, more to the point, up to date with their record keeping. But anything that seems to be more work that was originally quoted for is going to attract the possibility of extra charges.
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