#24479
Ray2U
Flatchatter

    I’ve been a strata secretary for over 10 years and I would advise you to, in effect, simply ignore difficult people; that is, wait a week or more and respond in a very brief way.  eg. “Thank you for your correspondence.  The matters raised will be reviewed”.   Read the email, then ignore.

    Are you legally entitled to do that? Absolutely.

    The only requirement is that the secretary has to “to answer communications addressed to the owners corporation” [SSMA 2015, s43(e)].  And if the mail barrage continues, it could be reasonably argued that ‘not to answer’ was the appropriate answer.

    There is no provision for an owner to demand anything from any other person at any time except that an owner may:

    • Attend an EC meeting but they cannot speak without permission [SSMA 2015, Sch 2, Cl 13].
    • Along with other owners (25% total), request that a general meeting be held [SSMA 2015, s19(4)]
    • Request that a motion be put on the next general meeting agenda [SSMA 2015, Sch 1, Cl 4(2) & (3)].  If the problem person is aware of his/her rights and inundates you with agenda request, just summarize them into one item (“the secretary must give effect to the requirement”).  Then at meeting the chairperson can limit speech time per person.

    There are no other references that I can find that give further power to an owner.

    Note that there is overriding protection for the EC members that, as long as you act in “good faith” you cannot be held liable for any failure to act  [SSMA 2015, s260].

    If you read the Act (and I would encourage you to read and understand the above references), you will realise it has been written with the knowledge that there will always be difficult people who are going to harass the volunteer EC members.  In essence, the Act explicitly gives protection for volunteers as long as they are trying to do a good job for the benefit of the OC. 

    Follow this link: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ssma2015242/

    Note: Although the 2015 Act is yet to have a proclaimed commencement date, the references given will (hopefully) last longer than if the current 1996 Act was referenced.