› Flat Chat Strata Forum › NCAT – the NSW Tribunal › Chance to have your say on the CTTT › Current Page
VNL, with regard to the performance (or lack thereof) of the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (CTTT), my experience with the Strata Division is very similar to yours, although I had two (2) wins out of five (5) hearings once I eventually negotiated the adjudication talk-fest.
Even then however, in both instances the residents in breach of our Plan’s By-Laws didn’t comply with Orders, and based upon uncollected mail left behind when one of those was eventually persuaded to vacate, didn’t make penalty payments either.
As I can’t afford to deposit $1M to Jimmy T’s lawsuit fund, I’ll limit my observations to the suggestion that members of quasi legal organisations such as those dealing with strata, industrial relations, and planning matters (where I’ve also had some less than memorable experiences) didn’t all gain appointment to their positions on the basis of their legal knowledge or even their practical knowledge of the matters they adjudicate upon.
Yet even on the basis of my own experiences and my appreciation of your frustrations with the CTTT, I will never concede that circumventing their system or any other is a means to overcome its shortcomings, rather it merely makes those who put it in place think that it’s all okey-dokey.
So what to do?
Well, it seems to me that as Minister Roberts (Fair Trading) seems fair-dinkum about his Government’s Review of the NSW Strata Schemes Management Act, and as there were earlier balloons flown by the Premier about “rationalising” the locations of the CTTT (at least), that a Submission to that Review and a letter to the Minister about the latter in your case would be well received.
I’ve done both of the above, and suggested amongst other things that Owners Corporations (O/C) should be regarded as “persons” in the Tenancy Division of the CTTT and thereby be able to bring actions to terminate the Leases of unruly tenants, and that O/Cs should be able to issue prescribed penalties to residents who breach By-Laws, and suffer the consequences of not following procedures and thereby getting it wrong.
No response from the Minister on my personal representation, but I’m confident that I’ll receive something; eventually.