- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 9 years ago by .
-
Topic
-
Can an owner put a cage around their car park to create a secure storage space? This old chestnut has popped up again on the Flat Chat Forum, years after we first heard about an owner who was denied permission to build a cage around her parking spot, but went ahead and did it anyway.
She argued that the car park was part of her lot so she could do as she liked with it. The Owners Corp argued that her cage intruded on common property because it was fixed to the floor, ceiling and wall.
In any case the cage was obstructing reasonable access to other owners’ cars. Her neighbour claimed he couldn’t open his doors properly and had to get out of his car and push it into place.
The owners corp took the cage lady to the Tribunal (then the CTTT) which, in its typical libertarian, anti-owners corp way, decreed that opening your car door over any part of another car parking space was trespass, and found in her favour.
Common sense prevailed at an appeal, and another and a court case or two and finally, a couple of years later, the cage lady came home to find the cage dismantled and lying in a heap in the middle of her parking space, with a bill attached for the cost of dismantling it.
Today, there are still two key issues with car park cages. The first is potentially restricting access to your neighbours’ cars – they have to be able to open their doors – and the other is change of use.
Car spaces are not supposed to be general storage areas and there may be valid concerns related to unsightliness, fire safety and the effectiveness of sprinklers.
As for access, it can only be a matter of time before an owners corp restricts the size of vehicles. You feel for the owners of a family car squeezed between two of those giant crew cab pick-up trucks that are so popular these days. Strata parking was never intended to accommodate these big boys toys.
But why do you feel you need a cage? Is it a security issue? If so, wouldn’t it be better to upgrade the security for everyone?
If you want to use it for storage, where will your car go? Visitors parking? I don’t think so!
There’s a lot more on this HERE on the forum.
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.
-
Replies
-
Our parking garage dates from the mid sixties, and has managed to cope with to-day’s 4WDs, including the odd Land Cruiser or Range Rover provided they are carefully centred in their spaces. No-one has asked about creating a cage, and the EC, of which I am a member, would surely deny them permission.
Recently, we have seen the advent of the first of the crew cab pickups that Jimmy mentioned. This leaves just enough space on either side, and it must be acknowledged that the truck is always well-centred in its space. However, its length is such that it encroaches by about 20 cm on to the common property — tolerable, but only barely so. For a while, the owner also parked a motorcycle between the truck and the wall, causing the truck to stick out quite a long way, inhibiting manoeuvres necessary to get even compact hatchbacks in and out of the spaces opposite and, in the view of most of us, breaching by-laws and a section of the NSW SSM Act.
When taxed with this, the owner extracted sections of a Standard created in 2004, i e some 40 years after our garage was built, and told us that the truck stuck out because the space was shorter and the manoeuvring space was wider than the Standard set out, so what were we complaining about? We pointed out that we were not bound by a Standard that had not existed at the time of construction, and that the spaces were as registered as part of our Strata Plan. Wiser counsel seems to have prevailed, and he appears to have made other arrangements for the bike.
There is just one space between the truck’s space and the end wall of the garage, currently used by a compact sedan. However, this space is linked to an apartment currently on the market. If the new owner drives a compact car, there should not be a problem. However, if their choice of vehicle turns out to be another crew cab, or perhaps one of today’s luxury-badged giant tarted-up farm implements, we shall observe proceedings with a degree of schadenfreude.
At least people are looking at standards to get a feel for what is reasonable. If the spaces are shorter than the current standard but the manoeuvring space is wider, then perhaps the current standard could be reasonably used to say how much sticking out of the space is reasonable and how much is not.
I recall an occasion when parking was discussed and some people argued that anything less than 3m wide parking spaces were intolerable. A reading of standards would have been worthwhile then. The standard seem well thought out. Minimum widths vary considerably depending on whether there is the ability to borrow door opening space from an adjacent clear area or parking spaces and on whether the manoeuvring space is more or less tight.
Car spaces are not supposed to be general storage areas and there may be valid concerns related to unsightliness, fire safety and the effectiveness of sprinklers.
Jimmy, please advise the section of the act that relates to your statement above, thank you
@justsaying said:
Car spaces are not supposed to be general storage areasIf the OC were to decide that some amount of storage was reasonable then they could be storage areas as well. An OC is a democracy, believe it or not! In our OC we have a general meeting resolution that assigns particular common property parking spaces to particular units and the conditions of that assignment permit moderate amounts of storage subject to conditions to do with excessive quantities, unsightliness and safety.
and there may be valid concerns related to unsightliness, fire safety and the effectiveness of sprinklers.
Maybe, but that can be taken into account in OC-agreed rules about what amount or type of storage is permissible.
@justsaying said:
Car spaces are not supposed to be general storage areas and there may be valid concerns related to unsightliness, fire safety and the effectiveness of sprinklers.There can also be OC/BC by-laws (rules) that prohibit or restrict storage in car spaces.
And to note that planning authorities (councils) can have quite strict car parking requirements. It generally would need council permission to change a car space into something that is no longer is a legal car space.
While there is an Australian Standard for car space sizes (AS2890.1-2004), there can be state (and perhaps even council) variations of it.
I’ve never found a requirement about storage and fire safety but note that although there can be sprinklers in modern car parking areas, there are no smoke alarms – not in any of the modern buildings I’ve looked at anyway. So there’s no early warning system like in the other areas of modern buildings. And a fire would probably be well established before a sprinkler gets triggered. That and the fact that car parking areas are often unsupervised is something an OC/BC should consider.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.