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I appreciate that by default the relevant sections of the Data Privacy Act mean that there is no requirement for Body Corporate Committee to provide an email address(es) for Owners to bevable to contact them.
My question is if they receive an ongoing honorarium would they now be deemed a ‘business’ ?
Meaning they are obliged to now provide one.
Section below is cut/paste from Privacy Act
«Generally, business information is not considered personal information as it is not about an individual. Therefore, information such as a business name, business address and primary business contact details (such as general business email and phone number) would not be considered personal information and this information would not be subject to the Privacy Act.
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I appreciate that by default the relevant sections of the Data Privacy Act mean that there is no requirement for Body Corporate Committee to provide an email address(es) for Owners to be able to contact them.
The Data Privacy Act? There are Federal and State laws but none of them have that name.
There certainly IS a requirement for Strata Schemes to register the addresses and contact details of all owners. There is also a requirement for anyone who is elected to the committee to be identified in various ways.
Section 178 of the Strata Schemes Management Act (NSW) says this:
(1) Information about lots
The following information must be recorded in the strata roll in relation to a particular lot in the strata scheme—
(c) an Australian postal address, and an email address if the holder has one, if not provided as the address for service.
If the email address is on the strata roll, it must be available to all owners on request. If the apartment owner has one, then it should be on the roll. Privacy laws in NSW do not apply to corporations with a turnover of less that $3m a year.
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.
An honorarium is a payment for the contribution of a committee member. It’s usually not paid on an hourly basis. By definition it’s not considered to be payment for specific work.
And it’s paid in arrears. That is, it’s awarded to a committee member for past service.
So there should not be any expectation of future performance by that committee member.It looks like this committee may be difficult to get a hold of. To me that’s a sign of a badly run scheme.
I am Chair of our Strata Committee.
We set up “generic” email addresses – ChairXXXstrata@gmail.com, also for Secretary and Treasurer so we could be contacted on specific OC matters other than through our private email accounts. Just a suggestion
I am Chair of our Strata Committee.
We set up “generic” email addresses – ChairXXXstrata@gmail.com, also for Secretary and Treasurer so we could be contacted on specific OC matters.
It’s a good idea. I have heard of strata committees also having a pre-paid mobile phone shared around for urgent matters.
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.
I agree with the dedicated email address, and our building has its own domain name and email hosting. That way we can have a single address to all committee members – sc@xxxx.xxx.xxx as well as secretary@, chair@ etc. This also facilitates maintaining, sharing and passing on the emails as strata records.
I also think it’s good to set up clear communications protocols. I function as building manager in our self-managed scheme, and I definitely want a phone call from a resident if a pipe bursts. But I don’t want it to check when the next levy is due etc.
So I think it’s reasonable to spell out that you’ll check and respond to a special email address daily/weekly/whatever for non-urgent, routine communications. But that someone can text/phone for urgent – and spell out that ‘urgent’ means fire, flood, lift breakdown etc.
This is one of the things that used to frustrate me when we had a strata manager. That there was no avenue for truly urgent contact. In one situation we had a smoke alarm sounding, and needed to contact the resident. We couldn’t get hold of the strata manager or the property manager, so the fire brigade had to break in…to discover something had been left on the stove and the resident had gone out.
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