› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Neighbour noise › EC will not act on noisy tenants › Current Page
Sarah said:
The first thing I would say is make sure that the by-laws are created via the strata management. In some cases if the by-laws are not chosen a default one will be selected, particulary when it comes to pets…
I'm not arguing with the sense of anything that Sarah is saying – in fact the rest of her advice is spot on – but at the risk of being picky, Strata Management doesn't “create” by-laws. What you need to do is check the by-laws that are registered for your building.
Also, there are no circumstances under which by-laws can be used by “default” except in the very rare occasion in which no by-laws at all were adopted at the first AGM of a strata plan – then Fair Trading's “model” by-laws would apply (but only the ones that were in effect when the strata plan was created).
Anyone who says, for instance, “we don't have a by-law on pets so we'll use the one in Fair Trading's model by-laws” is doing the wrong thing.
By-laws have no effect unless they have been adopted by the Owners Corporation at a General Meeting – if you don't have a by-law on pets or anything else, you can't just pluck one off the shelf and start using it.
Unless the Strata Manager has been empowered to act on the OC's behalf in these matters, breaches of by-laws have to be discussed and minuted at an Executive Committee meeting before a Notice To Comply can be issued. The NTC has to state which by-law has been breached. Again, that's YOUR building's bylaws … nobody else's (even though the chances are most of your by-laws may be identical to other buildings').
Yes, I know I'm being pedantic but if you start pursuing people with non-existent by-laws, you will end up worse off than you started.