Opportunist ‘parking thieves’ who grab unit block parking spots while they shop or commute to work could face fines of $550 when local council parking officers are allowed to patrol strata parking under changes to the state’s strata laws.
However, once parking wardens are in a building, residents too can be ticketed for parking in disabled spots, on common property driveways and even for parking over the boundaries of their parking spaces.
The detailed proposals for the update of strata laws – currently being examined by members of the NSW Cabinet – include provisions for local council parking wardens to be invited into apartment blocks and townhouse developments, mainly to help keep non-residents from stealing parking spots.
The details of who can be fined for what will be part of matching changes to the Local Government Act.
While owners corporations (bodies corporate) can deal with owners and tenants who park illegally, they have no sanctions against outsiders who gain access to their buildings and park for free. The law specifically forbids cars being clamped or towed without the owners’ permission.
This is a huge problem for unit blocks near business centres or railway stations, where rogue parkers – or parking thieves, as they are increasingly known in strata – will park for free in visitors’ parking, on driveways or even in owners’ spaces, knowing they are safe from any legal sanctions.
Under the new laws, strata scheme’s owners corporations will be able to make arrangements with local councils to ticket illegally parked cars. The maximum fine of $550 is part of across the board efforts to beef up all the sanctions for bad behavior in strata schemes and is a massive rise from the $220 previous maximum fine for many minor infringements.
“I assume the devil will be in the detail of negotiations between strata schemes and local councils which will set the actual fines,” says Gerry Chia, secretary of strata advocacy group the Owners Corporation Network (OCN). “But this is a huge issue in many buildings and the proposed law change is something for which we pushed very hard in our discussions with Fair Trading.”