› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › Common Property Concrete Cancer in a LOT – Who pays for Lot Owner costs? › Current Page
I agree with most of pmo’s comments, although unless the Owners Corporation has X-ray vision I don’t agree that any failure of it to detect concrete cancer in its common property, in this case with the floor of George B’s lot, could be construed as it being in breach of Sect.62 of the Act, or that a “window” within a yet to be gaxetted Act wherein owners may sue Owners Corporations who have breached their responsibility to property maintain common property could be interpreted as a retrospective provision.
I also wonder what George B’s approach to alternate accommodation would be if, in these same circumstances, his concrete cancer affected residence was a stand-alone property, and if he would consider that those same remedial works commissioned by him would render those premises ‘”uninhabitable” (under the defining criteria adopted by insurers) or whether he would make an effort to work-around the issue by moving items of his contents and by perhaps moving into another bedroom on a tempory basis.
I’m not suggesting that George B should meeky comply with his Strata Manager’s demand that he vacate his residence, but I wonder to what extent his Owners Corporation and/or its Executive Committe is aware of the detail of that, and to what extent the Strata Manager is acting autonomously.
So before adopting pmo’s suggested shock-and-awe approach I’d suggest that, via his Executive Committee Members and in advance of an application for mediation, George B formally makes his Owners Corporation aware of the situation, offers to make access reasonably available to its contractors and to allow them to move his personal property, with the trade-off that it pays to repair/replace anything that’s consequentialy damaged, leaves his residence as clean as is practicable at the end of each day, and that the duration of the remedial works be contractually reduced.
It reason doesn’t prevail, then by all means resort to a toned-down version of the shock-and-awe approach by perhaps deleting points 2, 3, 4, and 7 of pmo’s suggested correspondence.