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Topic
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Items on common property.
The Strata Company wrote to all owners and tenants asking them to remove all personal items from common property by 20 May 2016
They included unsecured pot plants on courtyard fence posts which leach onto the paintwork.
4 Large pot plants in at the entrance to a tower block, a door mat in front of a unit door and a small sign nailed to another door.
The Strata Manager has now responded “At the meeting which you attended the EC resolved that the mats and pot plants will be voted on at the AGM and that the sign on unit 20 door is approved”
There is no proposed management plan submitted for the pot plants. All items lack Owners Corporation approval.
Does the Executive Committee have the authority to grant interim approval of those items?
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In the ACT, the EC can approve a ‘minor use’ of common property if it is ‘unlikely to unreasonably interfere with the use and enjoyment of the common property’ by other residents. I am not aware that other states have an equivalent provision to allow minor matters to be dealt with simply. Instead my impression is that the same process is used for everything from the most trivial to the most substantial private uses of common property. I expect this leads to a lot of pragmatic turning of blind eyes, which can occasionally come unstuck.
Our OC adopted a rule (aka bylaw) which explicitly makes unit (aka lot) owners responsible for their items of property on the common property, whether they have permission to leave them there or not.
@Peter Koorey said:
The Strata Manager has now responded “At the meeting which you attended the EC resolved that the mats and pot plants will be voted on at the AGM and that the sign on unit 20 door is approved”There is no proposed management plan submitted for the pot plants. All items lack Owners Corporation approval.
Approval by the EC is approval by the Owners Corp, except in matters that have to be decided at a General Meeting.
It sounds to me like there has been a decision to clear up the common property before deciding what to allow and what not to allow. You could propose that any permission for pot plants be a ‘licence’ carrying conditions for their care and upkeep, and removal if necessary – i.e. if you wnat p[ot plants you have to agree to the conditions.
That may well require a by-law, if there isn’t one about personal property on common property already, and it’s probably safer to have 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.
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