LKY

New parking laws are NOT working as there is really no change for buildings with basement parking which is mostly the case.
Digital / Paper Committee Meetings are working fine in our over 250 unit strata with all owners / tenants sending their complaints and requests through the Strata Manager or Building Manager by email. It is only frustrating for those erstwhile Committee Members who can’t LIVE with that loss of power who try to ambush the Committee Meetings. Now they can’t.
Strata Managers continue to ignore or blink at strata laws so long as there is no stringent punishment of licence suspension / cancellation. Penalty points for violations are meaningless.If there is a violation by SM in one area, NSW Fair Trading must investigate if it is widespread in that strata management agency.
Strangely NSW FT says in its application for mediation that a dispute of Owners Corporation with their Strata Manager is OUTSIDE THEIR JURISDICTION !
In our own case SM paid 19 invoices totalling over $49,000 to Strata Committee Secretary’s private company for his so-called services ( time spent with lawyers, contractors, SM etc ) without following due process laid down in Section 25 of Strata Schemes Management Act 1996 ( that’s getting it approved at an AGM before making payment ).SM may blink at Strata Laws if they think same core Strata Committee continues year after year.
So it’s important NSW FT / NSW Government to amend SSMA 2015 to insist on SM / Strata Auditors to list ALL payments made to Strata Committee Members stating reason including reimbursement, amount , date in the Annual Report for the AGM and omissions of amounts over $1,000 should invite suspension of SM licence.
I hope Flat Chat publishes this comment as I am not giving any names while giving actual facts on which we are filing our Application for Mediation which they agreed we can after a direction from NCAT.

Besides electronic voting,may be AGMs held on the weekend will have more attendance of Monday to Friday working owners.In my strata,quorum was achieved only once in 9 years and that too because strata’s both funds were in deep deficit.Otherwise,4-5 owners out of 253 owners turn up for AGMs if we exclude the EC members.

After living in a major developer’s building for 9 years, I feel the new reforms are missing the most important aspect : safety.Safety assumes more importance as apartment living is becomes the norm in most suburbs.

What I saw in my building is this : installers of fire dampers / sprinklers,stair pressure fans,child safety features and annual fire safety inspectors are one and the same company and they go wherever the developer / builder goes.So what happens.Even if the dampers are not there,not installed correctly,stair pressure not right, they go unnoticed or ignored as it is human not to acknowledge one’s / their own mistakes.And conveniently,they don’t take photos and the Councils don’t ask for photo evidence of their certificate, though it is cheap,while giving occupancy certificates.

Fire safety equipments,especially dampers,is a major defect and the developer / builder escapes liability after 2 years in the new strata legislation.In our case,we did not realise it for 8 years !
Most owners of apartments are inexperienced in building safety matters and these things go unnoticed for years till there is actual fire.
The reality in OZ : there are vested interests in the building industry.So what do we do ? We must ask the Councils,at the expense of concerned strata, to undertake the FIRST annual fire safety inspection through an independent certifier with photo / video evidence where possible.Also installers of these equipments should never be the certifiers for 3 years.