@pielover said:
Who wants to go thru the rigmarole of going to the NCAT just ‘as a test case’? (By-laws should not be in place just so the committee can use them as a means to beat owners about the head and ‘threaten’ them with legal action/a fine )
By-laws work on a number of levels:
Firstly they are a guide to to owners as to what they should and shouldn’t be doing.
Then they are a deterrent and a valuable tool to pull owners and tenants into line (via a Notice To Comply) when they decided to do was they please.
Finally they allow OCs to punish the miscreants through fines for ignoring the NTC, and it is only then that their validity is tested. Unless an owner goes out of their way to prove a point, that’s a long road and a lot of compliance before you even find out if the by-law is valid.
Or put this another way, even a badly written and invalid by-law would have the effect of letting residents know what the majority of owners found unacceptable and it might never be tested at the Tribunal.
And on that note, I think we have covered this topic to death.