› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Airbnb and holiday lets › 1st NCAT case for AirBnB by-laws under SSMA2015 ? › Current Page
02/10/2017 at 10:53 pm
#28314
In a word: Yes.
The Ombudsman is empowered to investigate councils who fail to enforce legislation within six weeks of being notified of an issue..
One can telephone the Ombudsman to find out how to make a complaint against council for not enforcing the DA on a property. Admitting that there is a classic example where this action could have but hasn’t as yet been taken:
Two years ago the City of Sydney took a whoppa of a short-term letting operator to the Land and Environment Court. (The offender was the same protagonist behind the LEC’s 187 Kent Street judgments so knew he didn’t have a twig to stand on in the Bridge Street building matter. He offered no opposition in Court when the case was put and simply accepted the Orders plus a $10,000 fine paid to Council (not a cent went to the OC, of course), having turned over absolute millions in the “illegal use of premises” over the proceeding 18 years.
The Orders were against said individual/his company. Short-term rentals disappeared. Peace, for the first time in almost two decades.
Some months later, the building started seeing people coming and going again with suitcases, plus cleaning teams regularly race in and out, servicing apartments.
All details have been sent to the City of Sydney who now write:
“It is noted that you allege that the units detailed….are being used to provide short term residential/tourist style accommodation (a potential breach of the extant development consent). The use of these units for short term residential/tourist style accommodation has been considered in terms of its impact on the amenity of the building and the safety of its occupants to determine if it is within the public interest for Council to proceed with formal enforcement action against those facilitating the use of the units.
In this case, Council has elected to not enter into enforcement ction given that there is no significant detrimental effect on the environment and it does not constitute a risk to public health and safety.
It is recommended that you raise (or reiterate) your concerns with the Strata Committee who can investigate and take action accordingly.”
Said Strata Committee are the old short-term letting cohort and fans, including one big, former State MP. One of the Committee Members has a cleaning crew coming and going…serviced apartment. The Committee won’t lift a finger and have ‘resolved’ that any owner who has issue with STRs should refer the matter to Council. They also fail to list requests for Motions on Agendas…just can’t go on – there’s too much.
What should happen is the owner who has so far invested six full years in trying to correct the situation in the building should take the matter to the Ombudsman, as literally volunteered as an option to them by the CEO of the City of Sydney Council. Seems this is all a game to staff at Council.
As said previously, this would make an excellent ABC script, similar to that of Utopia. It could perhaps be entitled something along the lines of ‘Death by Exhaustion‘?