Here’s an issue that started as simple question on the Forum and has evolved into something altogether more troubling.
If your strata scheme has CCTV cameras recording the comings and goings of strata residents, visitors, staff and tradies, who gets to watch the footage?
How long does the strata manager hang on to it and what happens when it’s past its views-by date.?
The original question from a Flatchatter was about her strata committee’s plan to install a CCTV or video camera overlooking the swimming pool.
Now, it wasn’t so much that she was anxious about being observed in her swimming cossie, not that’s she’s exactly over the moon about that, it was about the potential for the wrong people to be watching kids, especially, playing in the pool.
As a result, parents might not allow their kids to swim in the pool – a potentially life-saving activity, as well as being healthy and fun – for fear that they might be being filmed.
Now, we’ve gone right in at the deep end on this as, coincidentally, our friends in the Unit Owners Association in Queensland have just issued a newsletter warning strata residents about the implications of having CCTV intstalled on their sites.
Basically, they say, because recordings of video feeds are strata scheme “documents” and all owners are allowed to view all documents owned by the strata scheme, then any owners can access video recorded on the CCTV.
Which has led to the spoof “ad” at the top of the page and a discussion on the kind of legally enforceable restrictions you might apply to people wanting access to the video. You’ll find the UOAQ newsletter here.
The PICA group has also published a very helpful factsheet about how the various strata laws in various states apply to CCTV and the images it records.
CCTV can be very handy for things like deterring bad behaviour, establish the facts in an insurance claim and identifying the idiot who ignored the signs about not taking glassware poolside and had it shut down and drained for several days until every last shard from their dropped champagne glass had been removed.
But it also has sinister “Big Brother” overtones. Either way, you need a by-law and you need to find a way of controlling access to the images without breaking strata law.
You can read more and put in your two cents worth HERE.
Elsewhere on the Forum:
- The AGM is going to be held on Zoom and one owner is hearing-impaired and needs to lipread as captions don’t work. Is the strata scheme obliged to find a way she can be involved? That’s HERE.
- Balcony may be leaking on to neighbour. Who’s responsible? FYI: It’s different in Victoria. That’s HERE.
- Another tricky Vic leak issue. The pipe is in a common property wall servicing only one unit. Who pays for repairs? That’s HERE.
- Can an owner be paid for putting the garbage bins out? That’s HERE.
- The green-thumbed resident taking over common property issue has gone to a General Meeting. That’s HERE.
- Is moving a much bigger hot water tank on to a balcony, a major renovation? That’s HERE.
- Speaking of renovations, is replacing the cupboard doors and drawers in the kitchen just a cosmetic change? That’s HERE.
As we say every week, there are more posts coming into the Forum every day. Now there are a couple of ways you can access them.
The best way these days may be to click on “Forum: Your Qs & A’s” on the top menu bar on a computer screen or, on phones and tablets, on the drop-down menu (three lines) on the right of the screen, under the Strata Choice ad.
Then click on the topic title that interests you, and off you go.
Alternatively, you can look at the list of “Your latest questions and answers” under the ads on the right of the page on a computer screen. Or at the bottom, after the ads and stories, on a tablet or phone.
Or you can go “old school” and go to the Forum Home Page and work your way through the topics there.
Whichever route you take to get there, the best way to keep up to speed with what’s happening is to register (if you haven’t already done so), then login and subscribe for free to the topics that interest you most.
That way you’ll get an alert whenever the discussion moves forward, and you can also chip in with your own comments and questions. Have a look HERE at our instant guide to getting online.
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