Firstly, what do you mean Jimmy by properly compensating the owners corp for its use? Can the OC legally agree to lease a visitor spot?
No. But allowing commercial enterprises to use the parking spots as if they had leased them is to deny owners’ legitimate visitors the opportunity to use them, which has a value.
Secondly, the Strata Manager agreed that these particular workers were visitors! Not much help there. And, as we are trying to stop employees from parking here, they would, theoretically, be excluded. But thanks for your comment S.
The strata manager is entitled to their opinion and, in the absence of a by-law defining what a visitor is, their point of view is, on the face of it, as valid as anyone else’s. But it’s not strata law and the strata manager clearly knows on what side his or her bread is buttered.
Just to be clear, there is a difference between a worker coming to the block to perform a task – such as a plumber or electrician – and someone who is an employee of a resident coming as part of their duties.
For some enlightenment on this, we can look to Queensland where Hynes Legal has, in this newsletter, addressed this situation:
This [Tribunal case] was one where employees of the resident manager were using the visitor car parks.
“I consider a ‘visitor’ would include anyone who is not an occupier of a lot, but who is genuinely visiting a lot or the scheme. I do not consider this is limited to residential or non-commercial visits. While a visitor may be a friend or family member visiting a tenant, they may also be a contractor such as an electrician visiting the scheme to do work.
I would consider the employees of the resident manager to be occupiers to the extent that they predominantly or regularly work at the building (as distinct from, for example, an employee who is based elsewhere but visits for an ad hoc meeting). However, a cleaning contractor attending to clean one or more lots would arguably fall within the designation of a visitor.”
Our takeaway: a visitor could be a family member, friend or the electrician appearing as a one-off, but permanent or regular attendees may well not be visitors.
Here’s another view, this time from a strata manager responding to a very similar query on Lookupstrata’s website.
The commercial lot owner is welcome to have his staff park in his own car space(s) but not visitor parking, in our view, because his staff are not bona fide visitors – they are the employees of his business.
The Oxford Dictionary defines visitor as “A person visiting someone or somewhere, especially socially or as a tourist”. It is difficult to see how an employee of a business within a strata scheme could be construed as a bona fide “visitor” to it.
So there you are – two opinions that employees are not visitors, which suggests that, at the very least, this is worth challenging at Fair Trading and NCAT.