› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Strata Committees › ‘Mr Chairman, may I be permitted to speak?’ › Current Page
In NSW it seems an owner not on the Strata Committee can attend a committee meetings but only speak with permission.
Correct.
Is it necessary to seek and be granted permission ahead of time, or can it simply be done at the actual meeting?
Skipping past the catch-22 that you can’t ask for permission to speak if you’re not allowed to speak, any reasonable committee would allow you to make the request. But then any reasonable owner would let the committee know in advance if they had the chance to do so. You could, for instance, ask the chair before the meeting is called to order.
And if one seeks permission to speak, is it a requirement one has to tell the Secretary or Strata Manager what one wants to speak about?
The committee can only discuss items that are on the agenda, so if you haven’t proposed a motion yourself, it would be a simple courtesy to let the chair know which of the items you wished to speak about. And speaking of courtesy, non-members being allowed to speak at committee meetings is exactly that. It is not a right and can be legitimately refused by a majority vote of the committee.