Oh, dear. You have my sympathy but this is one of those cases, yet again, where a Flatchatter has asked for advice on what to do, presaged by saying they don’t want to follow the two obvious paths available – take the culprit to NCAT and sack the strata manager.
But I get it. Why should you alone suffer the sleepless nights and frustrations of fronting up the the Tribunal?
So here’s a compromise solution. How about sending a letter to the strata manager that says something like this.
“Please confirm that any works on lot XXX (unit YYY) have not been approved and changes to common property have not been authorised by the appropriate permissions or by-laws, as required by Sections 110 and 111 of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act (2015).
“If so, please inform the owners that failure to remedy this immediately could lead to them, or any subsequent purchaser of the lot being required to resinstate common property under orders from NCAT, under requirements of Section 106 of the Strata Schemes Management Act.
“The strata committee also instructs you to copy this breach notice to the records of the owners corporation so that any future purchasers of that lot are aware that they may be required to allow us to reinstate common property, at their cost, due to the failure of the current owner to gain appropriate approvals.”
If the strata manager declines to do this, then explain to your other owners that the strata manager is setting you all up for future claims by purchasers of that lot for failure of common property installations over which you had no control – which could lead to expensive legal battles and the possibility of hefty bills to rectify the works.
Then sack them.