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I’m sure there’s a Strata Plan out there somewhere that doesn’t have electricity metering to individual Lots, but so far as I’m aware the greater majority (if not all) do. There would be a sub-board inside the individual Lots so that the electricity supply to those Lots can be turned-off, and the meters themselves may be centrally located – usually in a dedicated Meter Room or Cubicle.
The easiest way to check is to ask your individual owners to have a look at their electricity accounts, where those individually metered will show a numeric reading at the commencement of the billing period (typically 3 months), another at the end of that period, and by difference the electricity consumption for that period in Kwh.
None – but I assume that in the absence of an MDU Agreement it is Austar/Foxtel’s policy to use a Plan’s Executive Committee as the conduit (sorry) to secure the required Consent, and as I recalled, their Rep. advised that they’d prefer to have the MDU Agreement in place to avoid that repetitive step; they just don’t like including conditions other than their standard ones.
Anyway…. whilst not disputing the right of the Owners Corporation (O/C) to remove unapproved additions to its Common Property, in my humble opinion (I detest internet slang) any reasonable person would regard that as being totally unreasonable, particularly if they were then paying for a pay-tv service that they couldn’t receive, and in the case of tenants, one for which they’d possibly obtained the prior consent of their Landlord.
TINALO but I believe that if UN-FAIR wants to see the whole thing and/or its consequences played out in a Court, then by all means arrange for the removal of the cabling, conduit, and satellite dishes; remembering of course that the latter are Foxtel’s property! Come to think of it, as a sanity check, if UN-FAIR has a Strata Manager then perhaps the Executive Committee could instruct them to arrange for that removal, and see what reaction results; I’ll recon they’ll run a mile!
I still think that persistent approaches to Foxtel to encourage them to do the right thing with the past installations by their contractors would see a better outcome; but that’s just MPO.
Oh and by the way, our O/C’s original decision to delegate me the authority to enter into a MDU Agreement covering satellite dishes and cabling on specific areas of the Common Property was specially resolved at a General Meeting.
Our Plan negotiated a Simple Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) Agreement with Austar (now Foxtel) in 2010, and even though that process was akin to dealing with a Government bureaucracy when I tried to incorporate some specific conditions with regard to the positioning of visible components such as the satellite dish and conduit, those conditions and a site plan were eventually included.
I was originally advised by Austar that the MDU Agreement was in place to negate the requirement for them to approach the Executive Committee on every occasion that a Proprietor wished to subscribe to their service, although they would require the written agreement of those Proprietors or their Agent (property manager) if their potential subscriber was a tenant.
So that’s how it’s worked for our Plan, where seven (7) additional installations comprising three (3) additional satellite dishes have since occurred, the most recent being last July, and on each occasion the (different) contractors have complete the installations precisely in accordance with the specific conditions of our MDU Agreement.
Clearly your Plan has had a different experience, and whilst I don’t know the form its MDU Agreement I imagine they’re pretty standard, and ours states at Clause 2 that “Austar will repair any damage caused by any deliberate act or omission, or negligence of Austar’s employees or agents during its access to the premises including all Common Areas…..” and where “access” is defined in Clause 1 to comprise “inspecting the premises for the purposes of the installation of equipment” and “to connect equipment to units”.
I’d conclude that the original Application to which your post refers likely resulted in an MDU Agreement , and under that there’s no requirement for Foxtel to seek the consent of your Executive Committee prior to any further installations, BUT that Foxtel (in your example) is responsible for rectifying damage of the types to which you refer.
So you shouldn’t interfere with residents’ installations, but as the conduit etc is Foxtel’s property and it was their “employees or agents” who caused damage to and defaced the Common Property during the various installations, your Owners Corporation or its Strata Managers should persist with its approach to Foxtel and request that it rectifies the damage that they caused; photographic evidence and an approach to their customer relations people would help.
Doc., apart from the significant matter of your Executive Committee and/or Owners Corporation being in breach of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, on the basis of the numbers of problems that I’ve read on FlatChat over the past 4 years it’s apparent that informal arrangements that rely upon peoples’ goodwill almost always end badly.
Such arrangements with Owners usually go pear-shaped when they sell, and with Tenants at the end of their Lease.
As was correctly observed by JGOWI (post #5), the provisions of Sect.65B only allow an O/C to grant a licence to Owners, and if the resident/s who are to be the beneficiaries of the storeroom are Owners, then a licence is the best way forward.
A Special Resolution that in addition to your suggested fee addresses matters such as the licence period, the maintenance of the area, and the safe custody of stored items (e.g covered by the O/C’s insurance?) is by no means a big deal, unless of course there’s significant opposition (i.e. ≥25%) – in which case it’s far better to let the matter end there as opposed to having some disgruntled non-beneficiary of the storeroom later seek the intervention of the Tribunal; where your O/C would certainly loose and could be fined!
Finally, an informal exclusive use arrangement is an even bigger minefield, as in addition to the problems already discussed, it has the additional challenges of accounting for the potential increase in the “value” of the Lot to which it (informally) applies where that’s not reflected in that Lot’s units of entitlement, or for the arrangement possibly transferring to a new Owner as an existing (but illegal) privilege.
So my advice is …. a licence only to Owner/s is legally compliant, its process is transparent and the most expedient way to go; so please do it right or don’t do it alt all!
Actually we don’t know where The Doctor is located, but my interpretation was that the query was about communal as opposed to exclusive use.
Doctor – YES …. in NSW Owners Corporations can licence residents to use Common Property and impose conditions including a fee upon those availing themselves of that in accordance with the provisions of Sect.65B of the Strata Schemes Management Act (1996).
In order to do that your Owners Corporation (O/C) needs to place an appropriate Motion on the Agenda of a General Meeting, which in order to pass requires a favourable vote by ≥75% of those owners in attendance both personally and by proxy, and with that percentage being determined on the basis of the sum lot unit entitlement of those in favour ÷ the total lot unit entitlement of those in attendance.
Be cautious though, at least initially whilst your O/C assesses the appropriateness of the conditions imposed and how well residents abide by those, and with that in mind I’d strongly suggest that the Motion if approved covers a license of 12 months, with any continuance and/or altered conditions being considered at each Annual General Meeting.
caj – in the first instance, the Owners need to be informed that by drilling or otherwise attaching their hotwater heater to the Common Property and consequently by changing the visual appearance of that Common Property, they have breached By-Laws 5 and 17, and the Owners Corporation (O/C) could require them to reinstate its Property by removing theirs and repairing all surface damage.
That’s the hard-line but on the assumption that the Owners are prepared to cooperate, the easier and indeed customary approach would be for the O/C to require the Owners to retrospectively seek its Consent to alter, add, or in this case attach a new structure to the Common Property.
That request should be in writing, and it should be put before a General Meeting in the form of a Motion seeking a Special Resolution to create and register a Special By-Law permitting those Owners and any others who may at some future time wish to install a hotwater heater on the Common Property to do so, with standard conditions such Owners being responsible for the on-going maintenance, repair, and replacement of their property, acceptable installation locations, covering/camouflaging, lagging of hot water pipes (for safety).
The Special Resolution can only pass if ≥75% of those Owners present at the Meeting (personally & by proxy) vote in favour by lot unit entitlement, and ideally any resultant Special By-Law should cover any type of hotwater heater that the O/C is prepared to allow on its Common Property (e.g. storage tanks on the ground, solar on the roof), where, and under what conditions such those mentioned above.
The Owners who have done the wrong thing should be made to pay the O/C’s costs to convene the General Meeting, but as all Owners could conceivably benefit from the Special By-Law, the O/C should cover the preparation and registration costs.
And if they don’t cooperate……post again and I’m sure you’ll receive some practical advice about how your O/C should manage that potentially messy situation.
Sailor – in the first instance if you’re in NSW, the requirements of the Work Health & Safety Act (2011) don’t apply to the Owners Corporations (O/C) of Plans that are entirely residential (i.e. no commercial lots), that don’t incorporate any “workplaces” such as a gym or pool that’s available to non-residents, and that don’t directly employ “workers” such as a caretaker or on-site manager.
That said, the possible presence of asbestos on the Common Property is something that all O/C’s should make themselves aware of, and the process employed to achieve the desired degree of awareness ranges from a walk-through and note-taking exercise by some savvy Executive Committee Members and/or long-term residents, to some Strata Managers commissioning comprehensive (and sometimes costly) Reports; the best approach depends upon the site and whether the need is compulsory or precautionary.
Whether or not your O/C was required to commission the Report to which you refer, now that it has it your Executive Committee and Strata Manager needs to decide what if anything it now does with the information, and I guess that’s your quandary.
In order for that Report to comply fully with the requirements of WorkCover (NSW) for “workplaces”, the inspection should have been undertaken by a qualified person holding a Type A Licence, and it should have involved not only locating asbestos containing materials at your Plan, but initially identifying those by precautionary testing (e.g. friability), by assessing any risks to health based on the condition of and the potential for disturbance of those areas, and finally by recommending actions to control or further minimise the risks.
So it sounds to me like you’ve only received the first component of what’s compulsorily required, but the next step is, as you’ve indicated, to have representative samples properly collected by a suitably skilled person from those areas initially identified, and by having those mineralogically analysed by a NATA Accredited Laboratory; the one that I used was extremely helpful, and as I have relevant quals. they provided me with sample containers – their details are HERE.
Once confirmatory results are available, the information from the Report and the analyses should be included in an Asbestos Register, which contains information on the locations of the asbestos containing material, the composition and type of that at each location based on the friability tests and analytical data, the potential risk to persons’ health based on the condition of the material and the potential for its disturbance, and finally recommendations to control or further minimise risk to the health of “workers”; in other words on the basis of a standard risk-management process.
The Register needs to be kept on-site (or by your Strata Manager) and be incorporated with a Management Plan indicating how its information is to be used, such as to advise Contractors in advance on each occasion that they’re working on the site of the location/s of asbestos containing materials (i.e. site induction), where their work is done, what it was, what if any prioritised remedial actions the O/C will itself commission over time and when, and how often the document will be reviewed, which should be annually (at the AGM) or more often if the asbestos containing material has been disturbed, or remediated.
Just before KWP, Austman, PeterC, and any of our other interstaters jump in, I must say that I accept JGOWI’s point about amended Motions and I’ll include that point as another circumstance where an on-line vote may be invalidated, but for the life of me I can’t see the need for on-line participants to submit a proxy in circumstances where a quorum has been achieved at the physical meeting.
Frankly, I was more concerned on this occasion to ensure that the on-line “ballot” closed-off at around the same time as the meeting concluded, so that those personally present couldn’t influence those voting on-line to support specific and maybe contentious points of view.
Anyway, as I said back on post #2, I may finish up in Gaol for being innovative in my methods to encourage our Proprietors to participate in the operations of their Plan, but maybe the Magistrate (or Member) will be kind; I won’t comment further on the grounds that it may incriminate me
.A bit of feedback.
Just held our AGM, and as I mentioned before I trialed an on-line voting system on the basis that those votes would only be used if there was a quorum at the Meeting, or at a re-convened Meeting.
Well we achieved a quorum, and four (4) of the ten (10) Proprietors who were selected to participate in the on-line trial on the basis of their history of non-participation and their residential locations (e.g. interstate) actually did so.
Not a bad result first-up, and as those at the Meeting voted in favour of persevering with the on-line process at the next General Meeting, that’s a satisfying outcome from my perspective.
I’m sure that there are other on-line voting sites around, but the one that I used suits Strata Meetings perfectly, from group e-mails to all participants, secure logins and encryptions, and set start/finishing times, right down to limiting the voting options so that participants can’t vote “yes” and “no” to the same Motion, and to a “yes”/”no” with free-form entry for Motions such as the one restricting E/C decisions.
Really good, relevant, user-friendly, well supported, and in my opinion legal provided a quorum is achieved at the physical Meeting.
Have a look HERE for the details; up to ten (10) “electors” is free and beyond that reasonably priced!
That’s what happens when Governments devise projects on one side of an A4 page, assign it to Minister/s who’ve never worked in their lives and so create yet another new Department to enable them to say “I’m advised” at press conferences, who then creates a quasi-department to actually manage it, that outsources those management responsibilities to a former quasi-department, who farms-out the work to contractors, who in turn lets all components of that work to sub-contractors, who by this stage don’t know what the original project is and wonder why telephony networks done align with electoral boundaries.
Then the plebs wonder why the project costs quadrillions, and why nobody in the daisy chain has deduced that not everyone lives in a free-standing house!
As I said before, I’m happy with wireless; which is just as well, because I won’t live long enough to see the NBN at our Plan.
……and if the Coalition wins the Federal Election, then conceivably the Plan’s existing “backbone” would be utilised to deliver the NBN from the “node” to those Lots that want it; personally I’m happy with wireless.
Fkone – as you’re satisfied with everyone’s responses I’m somewhat reluctant to raise this related issue, but….
Before you and others renovate bathrooms or indeed any other areas of your Units, you must advise your Owners Corporation about precisely what you’re proposing to do, and seek its written consent to that.
Just one of the consequences of not doing so is that if an area such as a bathroom wall or floor is again damaged by an occurrence such as ground movement, the Owners Corporation need only make or pay for repairs to a standard equivalent to what was there before the renovations.
If you think about it that’s fair, if for example the original tiles that cost say $1ea may have been replaced by a cashed-up owner with ones costing $50ea, then the Owners Corporation shouldn’t be responsible for matching owners’ extravagance.
In the first instance the Owners Corporation (O/C) is responsible for correcting whatever it is that caused the ground movement and for doing whatever is reasonably necessary to ensure that it doesn’t occur again.
The O/C is then responsible for repairing all damage to its building that has arisen as a consequence of the ground movement, and that includes to the internal surfaces of walls, the upper surfaces of floors including anything on or within those (like tiles and pipes), and to any areas that may be accidentally or unavoidably damaged as a consequence of the O/C making its repairs (like cracking the render on the inside whilst repairing an outside wall).
There are a few complications in circumstances where an Owner has, without the prior consent of the O/C, renovated their Unit and for example replaced the original wall tiles with something far more expensive, but I won’t get into that unless it’s relevant; let’s know if it is.
prt1000 – I assume you’re in Sydney CBD, and you’ll find your answer HERE.
Re towing – it’s a long story, but in NSW, if the Owners Corporation (O/C) has a Special By-Law in place that provides for the towing of illegally parked vehicles, then it’s accepted that Owners (as members of the O/C) have implied acceptance and knowledge of that, and consequently their vehicles can be towed.
Sadly, tenants and outsiders don’t have that implied acceptance and knowledge of that Special By-Law (or of any other), and so their vehicles cannot be legally towed.
Don’t know what applies in the sunshine state; you there KWP?