#28756
Sir Humphrey
Strataguru

    I don’t think I find the Tribunal reasoning unclear. 

    I think they are saying:

    The OC can seek an order for a person to rectify some by-law breach and/or pay a fine for that breach. 

    The authority for the Tribunal to make the first order comes from the Strata Act.

    If the order is made but the lot owner does not comply with the order, then the OC can apply for a further order that the lot owner be fined for failing to comply with a Tribunal order. 

    The authority for the Tribunal to make this second order comes from the Tribunal Act. It is not needed specifically in the Strata Act, since it could be applied to any instance of failure to comply with a Tribunal order, not just in Strata matters. 

    I assume that the penalties are specified in ‘penalty points’ whose value is adjusted occasionally to keep up with inflation. 

    Is your issue, Jimmy, that the financial penalties go to general govt. revenue rather than to the OC? If so, this does not strike me as odd from familiarity with the ACT situation. Here, a penalty for committing the offence of failing to comply with a valid ‘rules infringement notice’ goes to general revenue, just like the fine for an offence against any other Act would. Ditto for any further penalty that might be applied for for a failure to comply with a Tribunal order. 

    Our committee chose to not apply for such penalties in a recent matter. First we got orders that the unit owner must remove the structure and reimburse the OC’s Tribunal application fee but we didn’t ask for the penalty (up to $750, from memory). Then, when the unit owner reimbursed our application fee but still did not remove the structure, we applied for an enforcement order that would have let the committee appoint a representative to enter the unit area and remove the structure, but again, we refrained from also applying for the financial penalty for failing to comply with the Tribunal order. We only applied to be reimbursed for the cost of our court application fee.

    In communication about the matter with owners, we made it clear that we could have applied for both fines to also be applied. This was about being seen to be focussed on the outcome rather than being punitive. Nonetheless, we did emphasise that this matter illustrated that the OC rules were enforceable through the courts if necessary.