› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Living in strata › Current Page
- This topic has 14 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 5 months ago by .
-
CreatorTopic
-
08/09/2012 at 11:49 am #8376
I’ve had a bit of a rant about the blaze that killed one young woman and badly injured another. It’s HERE if you are interested.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
-
CreatorTopic
-
AuthorReplies
-
09/09/2012 at 8:18 am #16457
@JimmyT said:
I’ve had a bit of a rant about the blaze that killed one young woman and badly injured another. It’s HERE if you are interested.Go for it Jimmy. I totally agree with your rant and may there be many more of them. Hopefully there will be no more deaths, but already it appears that instead of going to the root causes, a scapegoat will bear the brunt of blame and everything else that was wrong will be shoved under the carpet.
Some newspapers have reported that the residents in that four year old building had made numerous complaints about problems but no response.
Each story reminded me of previous posts to Flat Chat Forum and the difficulty for Owners and Renters to get information about their options when there was a problem.
It will probably take years for any Inquiry and court cases to be resolved, but please keep any progress (or lack of it) alive in this Forum.
09/09/2012 at 6:19 pm #16467AnonymousWhat are the responsibilities of the Strata Manager likely to be with respect to this? Surely they are accountable in some way for malpractice, mal-admin, mal-this and mal-that?
09/09/2012 at 7:00 pm #16468The strata manager, although they have certain legal obligations, can only act as instructed by the owners corp and their elected representatives, the Executive Committee. . From what I’m reading, it sounds like there were several fire ordinance notices served over the past few years but that they were complied with. This building was marketed heavily to the Chinese community and owners may have had limited appreciation of what their rights and responsibilities were. It will all come out in the coroners enquiry and I think the people of NSW are going to be shocked when the truth about strata living comes out
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
10/09/2012 at 7:39 am #16470This building was only new at four years old. When something is new you quite rightly expect it to be better, safer. I have a four year old car. It’s just a small car but has every safety feature known to mankind to keep myself and others safe. I would expect nothing less for a new car these days. How can a building not have every safety feature known built in?
One can only imagine how many more casualties there would have been had this taken place in the middle of the night. At 25 metres tall no sprinklers but at 26 metres there are sprinklers. What a joke. There would be the same number of people in this building if it were 26 metres tall. Perhaps we need a star safety rating for new apartment blocks. We have one for cars. Just as one might pick a five star car to commute, could pick a five star building to live. Something has to happen. One life lost is one too many.
10/09/2012 at 9:39 am #16472AnonymousI am most interested in the tragic situation here with regard to whether or not there was a Strata Manager for the building and their what their responsibilities might have been.
I am definitely NOT saying a Strata Manager or Executive Committee or indeed Owners Corporation may have been negligent here. But I AM saying the old disclaimer: strata managers “can only act as instructed by the owners corp and their elected representatives” is starting to sound very hollow. As does: “This building was marketed heavily to the Chinese community and owners may have had limited appreciation of what their rights and responsibilities were.”
Surely an ‘expert’, such as a Strata Manager, should make sure certain things are done and in place and frankly it’s time, since some make a ton of money (if they weren’t, why is one getting so huge and ‘acquiring’ a lot of others), to stand up and stop wriggling out of the responsibilities they surely must have instead of taking the money and running, absolving themselves of responsibility by saying we can only do what we’re instructed to do.
10/09/2012 at 10:14 am #16474Juan Durection said
… I AM saying the old disclaimer: strata managers “can only act as instructed by the owners corp and their elected representatives” is starting to sound very hollow. As does: “This building was marketed heavily to the Chinese community and owners may have had limited appreciation of what their rights and responsibilities were.”
Surely an ‘expert’, such as a Strata Manager, should make sure certain things are done and in place and frankly it’s time, since some make a ton of money (if they weren’t, why is one getting so huge and ‘acquiring’ a lot of others), to stand up and stop wriggling out of the responsibilities they surely must have instead of taking the money and running, absolving themselves of responsibility by saying we can only do what we’re instructed to do.
Juan, it reads very much like you are blaming the Strata Manager. But as for Strata Managers only taking direction, I know plenty of strata managers who will sit with their ECs and say they need to do this and that but as soon as the cost comes up, all bets are off and nothing gets done.
Maybe we should have a system where the strata manager just goes ahead and does what he thinks is required by law. But I can hear the wails of complaint already. In this case I would look right down the line starting with the developer, council planning officers and everyone else in the chain who decided to build this block the way they did before I got to the strata manager
It sounds to me like the Strata Manager in this case organised the fire safety checks, as he is required to do, and they were carried out and orders were issued and they were complied with.
As for your objection to my reference to this being marketted heavily to the Chinese community, I’m not sure what your problem is with this. Is it with me mentioning it or the fact that it happened?
FYI: It seemss the sales material was at least partly in Chinese which suggests that many of the owners had English as a second language, at best. As we know from reading this website, plenty of native English speakers have problems getting their heads around the intricacies of strata living.
In my view the Asian community is being heavily targetted by unscrupulous developers who know they can get away with a lot more than they would if their customers were fully aware of their rights and responsibilities. Is it wrong to suggest that?
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
10/09/2012 at 11:38 am #16476AnonymousJimmyT it is not fair of you, particularly as moderator, to start off by ‘verballing me’ by saying: “it reads very much like you are blaming the Strata Manager”. That is clearly not what I said.
Just as there are unscrupulous developers, there are strata managers who take the money and don’t do any more than tell ECs what they need to do but don’t necessarily see it done. (Just like the certifiers, it occurs to me.)
I can understand you getting bit twitchy about someone raising the issue of some strata managers’ modus operandi. They may be your sponsors, I realize, or maybe you want them as sponsors. But the big strata managers, or should I say, THE big one, has got their way of doing as little as they can legally get away with and if ever the proverbial hits the proverbial, they just say: ‘Well it’s not us, it’s the Executive Committee.”
The system you suggest where strata managers must get the things done that are required by law sounds like a good one to me.
And quite obviously if you buy into an apartment complex and don’t understand what you’re getting in to, your ignorance cannot be an excuse. Caveat emptor can sometimes be cruel.
10/09/2012 at 3:40 pm #16480Juan
There was no intention to ‘verbal’ you, I was trying to get what you meant by leaving a “hollow” feeling. That’s generally taken as a negative, no?
But I’ll tell what really does annoy me – every time I defend any strata professional, someone says “oooh, it’s just because they’re your sponsor.”
Do you have any idea how insulting that is to me? When I read comments like that I get the urge to close the site, scrap the newspaper column and go back to writing books and TV scripts (which is what I should be doing anyway).
If you think I’m biased in favour of strata professionals because some of them sponsor this site, I think you may be posting to the wrong website.Oh, and by the by, I don’t know how caveat emptor translates into Cantonese but I don’t see why it should apply to your home when it doesn’t apply to any other purchase you make, from a toy car to a real one.
.The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
10/09/2012 at 6:18 pm #16481Jimmy
Don’t get too strung up about negative comments. You’re not going to please 100% of the people 100% of the time so every now and then you’ll come up against guys on the internet you wont see eye to eye with (trolls or otherwise).
With the Bankstown fire, I was there yesterday and there’s still a couple of fire trucks parked outside the building so the investigations are still ongoing. I agree with you that it’s not good enough but until the laws are toughened up, this sort of thing will continue to happen. There are a multitude of units in this region (Bankstown, Yagoona, Punchbowl, Wiley Park, Lakemba, and yes I’m a local), that would fail fire test inspections today if anybody took the time to investigate, but with the penalities low or non existant for non compliance, is it any surprise that nobody cares. Until the government (that’s you Barry) gets tough on this and, for example brings in manslaughter charges or the like when something like this happens (or at least some serious financial penalities), then things will continue to go on this way forever.
11/09/2012 at 10:26 am #16487I am no fan of Strata Managers, however our SM could not have known when they took on the management of this complex that aspects of its construction did not meet Building Codes or Australian Standards. It was not until someone was injured (not permanently or seriously) on common property and the experts were called out that this was discovered. So let this thread be about people being able to live in a home that believe will be safe.
I read on a blog this morning that of the new blocks built since 2000 some 85% have reported defects and of these some 75% are still awaiting a satisfactory resolution. If 85% of a car brand were defective the government would have them do a recall and recitify. If I bought a brand of lamp and they were 85% defective same thing. I bought a new LCD TV and was phoned a week later to be advised that it had a fault and I had to return it immediately.
But I can buy a new home, with government help, find faults, find no help and then have to find the money to fix it myself.
11/09/2012 at 11:25 am #16488struggler, didn’t your SM organise a safety audit to be undertaken prior to the accident happening. I know that our SM did a safety audit which identified things such as the height of our safety rails not being to current standards (this was not a fault of the builder as the building is over 40 years old and it was probably kosher back then but it doesn’t meet current standards). Our SM told us that if we didn’t undertake the safety audit, we would have been in breach of our responsibility and would be liable for any injury or death resulting from this. I think they also mentioned that it was a requirement of our insurers that this type of audit take place periodically (every 5-10 years) for the policy to be valid. If this is the case, your SM should have organised it, but I’m not sure if this is a leglislated requirement. Maybe someone can confirm.
12/09/2012 at 10:16 am #16478Hi all, new here but very interested in everyone’s comments and thoughts on this topic.
I live in a Strata Plan with major defects (structural, fire, acoustic and general) and we are have a devil of a time getting things moving. We have started proceedings within the specified time, so that’s a good starting point.
The relevance of our problems to the issues in this topic are that we too have a number of things around our development that could easily cause injury. The developer, builder and PCA have been MOST helpful (can you feel the sarcasm in that statement, I hope so)! To repeat what a number of people have said over the years, it amazes me that the responsibility lies in the hands of the owners rather than the people who did shoddy work and the people who could not be bothered to do a proper job certifying that the work met the Building Code – which is most certainly does not.
We don’t have the money to fight a court case AND to fix the dangerous things around the development. So what do we do?
Just for some context, we’re in Sydney, our development is under the last resort insurance scheme, we have outlayed somewhere in the vicinity of $150k on lawyers, engineers reports and experts so far and have seen very little movement. We’re raising more special levies to go to court but I can see a long and hard road ahead. Rough estimates at this stage are that the defects will cost $4-5million.
12/09/2012 at 1:39 pm #16501How could a Royal Commission be started out of the Bankstown tragedy?
Apparently the same developer/builder has quite a few buildings and probably has used the same defective plans for all of them.
Could a class action be organised by a group of concerned Owners in shoddy buildings?
Maybe a a legal firm with a conscience could offer support to the victims (and families) of the Bankstown tragedy while it is still in the news?
15/09/2012 at 9:38 am #16558Firstly, my thoughts are with the survivor, and the families of the two students, and the residents of the building whose lives have been turned upside down. This is an absolute tragedy.
Self-certification should never be allowed: I can only hope that it is scrapped soon as it is a preposterous situation that will always be to the detriment of strata dwellers in the short and medium term.
As to the SM somehow being responsible, they can only act with the instruction of the OC; most newly appointed SMs would undertake an audit and then make recommendations to the EC. Generally the EC will baulk at the costs and a plan is drawn up giving the most urgent items precedence. In the case of new buildings, this involves litigation and therefore it becomes a lengthy process. The onus for poor development sits with the developer, not the SM, but, assuming the developer didn’t set up a Phoenix company it still requires a very persistent and vigilant EC and SM to chase the developer, so you have an additionally flawed situation (unpai volunteers and a professional who can mostly only ‘advise’ ) trying to rectify the rubbish of shoddy development work and self-certification.
There has to be a better way…..
-
AuthorReplies
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Living in strata › Current Page