Child Safety Locks – is a compliance check required?

If I am reading this correctly, five townhouse owners have failed to respond to the self-check emails or letters and they are being targetted for independent checks.  That seems reasonable to me, as long as the recalcitrant owners will be paying for the checks and not the owners corp.

It’s true that the strata scheme is responsible for common property windows (which they all will be) and it is entitled to check for possible failure or removal of child safety locks.

Section 106 of the Act says the OC is responsible for repair and maintenance of common property.

Section 118 of the Act says that “an owners corporation … must ensure that there are complying window safety devices for all windows of each building in the strata scheme that are windows to which this section applies.” (My emphasis).  There is a maximum fine of $550 for failure to do so.

Section 122 of the Act empowers the OC, its agents, employees or contractors  “enter on any part of the parcel of the scheme for the purpose of  carrying out …  work required or authorised to be carried out by the owners corporation in accordance with this Act (including work relating to window safety devices …)

Paragraph 5 of the same section says owner could be fined up to $550 if they “obstruct or hinder an owners corporation in the exercise of its functions under this section.”

So, breaking that down, the owners corp is legally required to “ensure” that child safe window locks have been fitted and legally entitled to enter the property, if need be, to check that this has occurred.  In cases where owners have declined to confirm the window locks are in place via a self-check, the OC is entitled to wonder if they are there at all, and obliged to find some other way of checking.

I would think a polite reminder that the windows need to be checked and if the owner refuses, then a contractor will do so at the owners cost and there is a maximum fine for not allowing them in to do so, would increase the level of self-check compliance overnight.

Our unit block of 10 paid $3,500 to have child safety locks installed to comply with legislation. The contractor took all of five minutes in each unit (and the stairwell windows) to drill a slide in the upper sash and slip a plastic block with key in the slide.

The apartment block gets hot in the summer and most residents, who are tenants, have removed the blocks so they can open their windows completely to let the air in. These blocks have not been replaced when they have moved out.

I am on the EC committee and being a ‘compliance check’ nazi  would be a futile exercise. I can only rely on the Certificate of Compliance that the SM has on file, certifying the task was completed as mandated by legislation, as sufficient that the OC is covered in the case of a mishap.

Most owners don’t attend the AGM and I have never even met them, so trying to have them comply with replacing the stolen/misplaced/ discarded locks would be a complete waste of time.

I’m a victim of a Strata Manager – ‘Window Lock Nazi’. My ‘crime’ was to elect to install the locks myself , simply to avoid having the devices painted on during renovations.

I’ve been reimbursed for the cost of the Locks and have (in a attempt to appease said Nazi) had a member of the Strata Committee, inspect the installation, which was duly reported to the Nazi and Owners Corporation.

Even though the Nazi has conceded that a Compliance Certificate is NOT an mandated requirement of the Strata Titles Management Act, the drain of Strata funds continues via ‘disbursements’ from repeated narky and harassing emails to the O.C regarding my crime.

Of course, I have been given the option of spending $90 to the strata managers for this nonsense to stop.