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Jimmy, I just established the a/c proposed is reverse cycle split system.
If that’s the case, then it still comes under Section 110 (Minor Renovations) which says this:
(4) Before obtaining the approval of the owners corporation, an owner of a lot must give written notice of proposed minor renovations to the owners corporation, including the following—
(a) details of the work, including copies of any plans,
(b) duration and times of the work,
(c) details of the persons carrying out the work, including qualifications to carry out the work,
(d) arrangements to manage any resulting rubbish or debris.
(5) An owner of a lot must ensure that—
(a) any damage caused to any part of the common property by the carrying out of minor renovations by or on behalf of the owner is repaired, and
(b) the minor renovations and any repairs are carried out in a competent and proper manner.
Apart from that, if the strata committee has full delegated powers to act as the OC, then the SC can decide on approval or otherwise and if the owner isn’t happy they can take it to an EGM or AGM for approval by the entire OC.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 you want to call an EGM just for your reno, you might offer to pay the costs of organising and holding it.
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The Tribunal, should your committee try to take action, would find in the other owners favour, in all likelihood, and could order damages,
The Tribunal doesn’t award damages – only prescribed penalties for by-law or strata law breaches – and only awards costs in very specific and limited circumstances such as one party knowingly pursuing a hopeless case or delaying the process unnecessarily. You can’t assume the Tribunal would rule one way or the other, especially in a case where an owner has not followed strata law and by-laws.
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You are on shaky legal grounds, I think. The Owners Corporation has authority over common property only, and in the case of installing an AC that would likely mainly involve a couple of holes through the walls for the pipes and electric cables.
As I have noted in the other aircon thread, in NSW balconies are common property and the owners corp can decide what is and isn’t allowed on them.
There are other errors in this post. Of course, committee members can communicate with individual owners, although, as you say, they can’t make demands or issue rulings individually.
Also, installing aircon is only listed as a minor renovation in the regulations if it is a reverse cycle system. So what does that say about non reverse cycle air con? Here’s an extract from the Regulations
28 Minor renovations by owners
Work for the following purposes is prescribed as minor renovations for the purposes of section 110 (3) of the Act:
(d) installing a reverse cycle split system air conditioner,
Note. The work prescribed by this clause is subject to the requirements set out in section 110 (7) of the Act, including requirements that it does not involve structural changes, changes to the external appearance of a lot or waterproofing.Section 110 (7) says the minor renovation clauses don’t apply to work that changes the outward appearance of the lot. You may also have a look at Section 108 which requires some changes to common property to have by-law approval.
And even if it is a minor renovation that doesn’t require a by-law – which is far from clearcut – there are still processes that have to be followed and permissions that must be obtained, as per section 110.
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Does the building have the money to make your repairs, or will it need to hold a general meeting to raise a special levy?
Or raise a strata loan which shares the financial burden on owners more fairly.
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Remember that the owner owns the airspace in the unit, and the balcony (depending on how old the building is, I think?), and all the Owners Corporation have a say over is common property.
In NSW, generally speaking, the balcony is common property and the owners corporation can decide what is and isn’t permitted on it.
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So, do those two vacancies need to be filled ASAP (and how) …?
There’s no hard and fast rule but until you have filled the vacancies, anyone can come along and nominate themselves for election to the committee and you’d be hard pressed to refuse since the scheme has already established the size of committee it wants.
The remaining committee members can co-opt new members by a simple internal vote. The roles of secretary can also be reallocated by a simple vote and one member can have more than one office.
and does a new secretary have to be elected amongst the remaining three?
No. Any co-opted member of the committee can be elected to the role of office-bearer. I recently resigned from the committee of our investment property where I was also chair (not least because I think office-bearers should live in the building). My successor as a member and as chair had already been identified before I triggered his election by resigning. He was elected to the committee, stood as chair and was elected to that too.
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Now that aircon is assumed to be nothing special you’d be facing the cost to meet todays minimum standard,
Is it the minimum standard? I would have thought a power supply that could cope with the demands was the minimum standard. While it may be true that new buildings may require air con in every unit – and reverse cycle air con has been deemed a sustainability measure – you can’t graft new standard on to old buildings that couldn’t cope with the power demands.
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your right to install aircon has been established in court.
I wonder if that covers owners “right” to cause a brown-out or complete system failure if the power demands exceed the capacity to supply. Our block won awards for its design, including cross-flow ventilation and limited air-con, and as a result has an inadequate transformer which would not cope with maximum demand if everyone had air-con at the same time (which they would have because the weather is the same for everyone in the building).
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One option we are looking at is to engage our local council in a Strata Community Parking Agreement, whereby we install signage outlining parking hours etc and the local council rangers then patrol the visitors carpark and fine offenders.
I understand very few if any councils are prepared to get into these arrangements, for a combination of the following:
- Parking officers patrolling indoor areas is a Workplace Health and Safety issue
- Very few strata schemes have a clear definition of what illegal parking is
- This often becomes a dispute between neighbours
- Strata schemes get anxious when they realise otherwise compliant residents might also be pinged for parking over the boundary lines of their parking spots
- It’s just not cost effective.
To get back to point 2 on that list, have you defined in a by-law what a “visitor” is.
Is it someone who doesn’t live in the building but stays for a couple of hours. How about someone who has a friend in the building, who stays all day. Is someone who frequently parks overnight a visitor? How about the additional Airbnb guest for whom there is no parking space attached to the lot? How about the romantic partner of a resident who parks all weekend, every weekend? Or the family who use their garage as a rec room, or their parking space for storage.?
There is no universal or even state-wide legal definition for this – which is good. It means you and your neighbours get to define it to suit the lifestyles of the majority in your block through a by-law.
So, in your position, I would canvass all the resident to find out how they feel a visitor should be defined in a by-law, then get that by-law passed and adopted.
Once you have that in place, you can start issuing breach notices to residents and owners. Once you have sorted them out, you can turn to non-resident rogue parkers – a whole other box of snakes. A secure parking entrance gate controlled by electronic fobs would be a start.
But first you have to define what your block feels defines a bona fide visitor.
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Unfortunately impossible to check the PID-STRA… So their system is pretty useless to management.
One way to check is to look at that ads on the holiday letting sites. The rego number has to be on the ad. Otherwise, ask the host to provide proof that they have registered, reminding them that not to have done so is a serious offence.
This is what the STRA code of conduct says:
2.4.11. …before advertising or offering premises for the purposes of entering into short-term rental accommodation arrangements, a host must ensure that the host and the premises are registered on the premises register. This section is an offence provision under section 54C of the Act.
And this is what section 54C says: “A short-term rental accommodation industry participant who contravenes a provision of a code of conduct that is identified by the code as an offence provision is guilty of an offence. Maximum penalty—1,000 penalty units in the case of a corporation or 200 penalty units in any other case.”
In layman’s terms, one penalty unit is currently $110, therefore 1000 penalty units equals $110,000 and 200 penalty point equals $22,000. Also two “strikes”, as in serious breaches of the Code of Conduct, can lead to the unit, host or guests being struck off the STRA register and forbidden from letting or renting holiday lets.
So a polite letter asking them for proof that they have registered, followed by something quoting the law if they tell you to “nick off”. If they ignore that, it could be your trigger for a complaint to see if they really are registered.
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Okay, let’s unpick that. Section 178 says the strata roll must include the email address of the owner if they have one which is not provided as their address for service.
Obviously I should have pointed out that the law does not expect people to go out and get an email address if they don’t have one.
So are you saying that I should have made it clear that the law doesn’t expect people to supply email addresses that they don’t have?
Hmmm. And I’m being “extreme” for not saying that?
The point is that the law says owners who have email addresses should supply them to the strata roll and that the strata roll is one of the documents to which the strata manager must allow access for all owners. Surely that’s the issue – not my being “extreme” (for once).
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Jimmy, can you indicate which sections of the SSMA and other strata acts compel the owners corp to enforce strata by-laws.
It’s section 232(2) but you would have to prove that they knew there was a by-law breach. At the moment you don’t seem to have done that. Also, if you CAN prove there has been a by-law breach (rather than just a complaint), why not just go straight to Fair Trading and then NCAT. Otherwise you are just double-dipping into a can of worms as well as making it seem like you are the problem, not them.
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Is it still the case or not possible anymore?
As of February this year, Powers of Attorney are counted in the same way as proxies – only one per 20 lots in the block. E.g 1-39 lots allows 1 proxy or PoA; 40-59 lots allows 2 proxies or PoAs, etc etc.
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