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There are a number of elements to your concerns re your neighbour’s tent to consider when writing to your committee.
You should reference the by-law/s (e.g. altering the appearance of the building) that your neighbour is breaching when you write to the committee outlining your concerns.
You should also ask the committee if approval has been given for your neighbour to erect their tent, unlikely as that may be.
Be prepared for the committee to ask if you have approached your neighbour to express your concerns. Until you do that the committee may not take any action or do anything about your complaint. Your neighbour may firmly believe that the tent’s functionality outweighs how ‘bad’ it looks or any safety issues.
You neighbour may also be breaching a local council law or development approval if they are using the tent as an additional room for accommodation. However, local council response to an enquiry or a complaint from you may be muted with an “it’s something for your community to sort out” response.
Unless it is made of fire-retardant material, the tent itself poses a fire safety hazard which has to be managed by the committee on behalf of the owners corporation. Your building’s fire safety provider would be able to assess the risk or if any safety standards have been breached by the erection of the tent.
May the force be with you.
Short Term Rentals are allowed in Queensland according to Section 180 of the Body Corporate and Community Management Act which prevents restriction of the type of residential use. This has been confirmed a number of times by case law as exemplified by the examples below.
From Pinnacles Whitsunday [2017] QBCCMCmr 582 (24 November 2017) – ‘By-laws restricting occupation of lots to periods shorter than three months in twelve are invalid‘ under Section 180 of the Act.
From Lynkim Lodge [2016] QBCCMCmr 419 (14 September 2016) – ‘By-laws restricting occupation of lots to periods longer than three months in twelve are invalid‘ under Section 180 of the Act.
The two examples above come from the Australasian Legal Information Institute website which has Case Law for each State listed within the various jurisdictions. Searches for relevant cases can be conducted using key terms such as ‘airbnb’ in a box at the top right of the screen within all or selected databases within each state’s jurisdictions.
As an example, Qld strata cases from the year 2000 are in the ‘Qld Body Corporate and Community Management Commissioner – Adjudicators Orders’ folder.
As far as I can make out – NSW strata cases from 2014 are in the NSWCATCD (Consumer & Admin. Tribunal Consumer & Commercial Division) folder, cases from 2002-2013 are in the NSWCTTT (Consumer, Trader & Tenancy Tribunal) folder, and cases prior to 2002 are in the NSWFTT (Fair Trading Tribunal) folder. In these folders, strata cases are mixed up with non-strata cases that fall under the same jurisdiction.
In all states of Australia, it is a requirement of AS3745-2010, Section 3.5 of Planning for Emergencies in Facilities, to have Evacuation Diagrams in the common areas of multi-residential buildings.
In Queensland, the emergency exit diagrams must show the path to be followed to exit the building, eg. via the stairwells. The exit diagrams must be no smaller than A4 size. The diagrams show the location of fire hydrants, fire extinguishers and fire hoses for the level the diagram is on.
In our building, the diagrams are placed in the corridors above the Up/Down buttons of the lifts.
It is up to occupiers to familiarise themselves with the exit diagrams. In the event of an emergency they should know in advance the path to exit the building. Visibility is an issue in corridors filled with smoke from a fire, especially at night, event with emergency lighting operating.
Using lifts to evacuate a building in an emergency is an no-no. Fire services personnel have a key that over-rides the lift systems so that if they cannot exit the lift on the level of the fire, the lift doors will shut very much faster than usual.
We have two lifts in our building in QLD. The building is no longer connected to the copper landline but is connected to the coaxial NBN cable.
Those residents that had landline home phones could retain those phones but had to connect them to the NBN cable. The issue with that is those residents lose that home phone connection whenever there is a power failure or an outage to upgrade the NBN network. Without power, the NBN phone line in each of those units doesn’t function.
Which brings us to the emergency phones in our two lifts. We don’t have those phones connected to the NBN as they wouldn’t work if there was a power failure to our building. Instead, we have a battery-powered lift module that allows the lifts’ emergency phones to work off the mobile phone network.
The emergency phone module was fitted by the lift manufacturer’s technicians for a total cost of just over $3,800. The lift manufacturer provided the SIM card for the module.
At the time we replaced the lifts’ emergency phone system, the NBN Corp did not have a solution for what to do about replacing the emergency phone landline connection with an NBN connection that worked during a power outage, etc.
In the pre-NBN era and now, anyone stuck in our lifts could/can choose to use their mobile phones to dial the emergency 1300 number as long as their mobile phone had/has enough coverage in the lift. We’re also fortunate to have an uninterrupted line-of-sight ‘connection’ to the nearby mobile phone tower for our area.
With regard to a building being NBN-ready, buildings have to have coaxial cable installed and connected to the NBN network. In our building, the NBN cable was brought underground into the building and then to each of its nine levels along an existing service duct containing water meters and pipes.
On each level, the cables were then connected through the corridor ceiling cavities to an access panel above each unit’s entrance. Owners were responsible for connecting their unit to the NBN. Some owners had a cable technician do this for a cost of around $200 so that no cables were visible within their units but were hidden behind the ceiling and wall panels. Other unit owners had their internet service providers arrange the connection as part of the installation of the NBN modems.
The cable tech. most likely will have to drill through a unit’s firewall when the NBN cable is brought into that unit. If that is the case, the tech. is required to use a heat-resistant sealant where the cable passes through the firewall. It is usual for the tech. to photograph that this has been carried out. From memory, the fire-resistant sealant was purple-coloured.
It was ironic that when our building was constructed, it was pre-wired with fibre optic cable in anticipation of the implementation of a fibre-optic NBN network.
Unfortunately, by-laws can’t regulate interpersonal relationships. The advice above about contacting the police is good advice. It may be necessary to contact the police if the verbal abuse, loud music, phone calls etc. continue even if the bins are no longer an issue. There should be a police contact number for non-emergencies (131 444 in QLD) for you to phone about the loud music, verbal abuse, prank phone calls, etc.
It’s too late now, but one way to have approached the situation, would have been to put your bins where your neighbour puts her bins. After all, it is common property and not an exclusive use area attached to your neighbour’s lot. Since she’s behaving irrationally, that might have provoked her into tipping your bins over which becomes a health issue for you to contact the local council and your owners committee.
It’s 25 per cent in QLD, too. I think that BONNIE L provides sound advice. Go to the tribunal.
With regards to an owner requested general meeting, the NSW legislation should have parallels with the QLD legislation. In a 4-unit block, one owner would apparently satisfy the 25 per cent requirement.
In QLD, the notice requesting the extraordinary general meeting must be given to the committee secretary, or in the secretary’s absence, the chairperson. The secretary is taken to be absent if they do not respond to the owner’s/owners’ request within 7 days.
In QLD, the notice/request must include signatures of at least 25 per cent of lot owners or their representatives and the motions which the owners on the request want to have decided at the meeting.
The secretary (or chairperson) receiving the request must call an extraordinary general meeting within 14 days. The general meeting must be held within 6 weeks of the receipt of the request.
In QLD, if the meeting is not called within 14 days, the owner/owners who signed the original request can ask another committee member (if there is one) to call the meeting. The meeting must be called within 14 days of receiving the new request, etc.
If you have to go to NCAT because the secretary refuses to call a meeting, there will be a delay. You may be able to get an interim order quickly but that might not apply as it’s not an emergency or life-and-death situation. In my limited experience of strata case law, an interim order is commonly used to stop motions from being put into effect until a final order is handed down.
Based on QLD experiences, it will take over 3 months and not uncommonly 6 months to get an NCAT ruling or final order. Which, if you are successful and an EGM is ordered, will result in the EGM being held close to the scheduled July AGM. The adjudicator may take this into account and rule that the motion is to be decided at the AGM to “save costs.” Which is why, I think BONNIE L’s response above has hit the nail on the head.
Did you make a submission to the 2016 QUT Property Law Review of the BCCM Act which would have given you the opportunity to detail the issues you raised above?
If you are unhappy with your committee, take your dispute to the Commissioner’s Office.
Don’t forget that when you deal with the Commissioner’s Office of the BCCM, the requirement is the burden of proof lies with those lodging a complaint.
It is not up to the adjudicator or your body corporate committee to make your case for you. And your case must be based on a correct interpretation of the legislation. Which is why some applicants and respondents seek legal advice and assistance in writing their submissions to the Commissioner’s Office.
The adjudicators who make rulings and orders on body corporate disputes can be retired silks, QC’s and the like. They are not dills. Nor can they afford to be slack in their adjudications which can be appealed in higher courts with the potential for a loss of legal prestige, bad press, etc.
If you are unhappy with an adjudication, you can lodge an appeal with QCAT which deals with complex legal issues above BCCM level. There you will be able to state your case either in person in a court room or over the phone. Get a knock back from the judge, senior member, member, adjudicator or justice of the peace at QCAT and you can progress to the Supreme Court.
But if you go on to the Supreme Court you will be up for some serious costs. So beware of lawyers who don’t give you a frank assessment of your chances of success.
And, if it’s a serious question of law, you can go all the way to the High Court provided you have really deep pockets. It’s not inconceivable that you could be out of pocket to the tune of around $300K and still not get the result you want.
If you are unhappy with the BCCM legislation, lobby your local State MP, the State Attorney-General and the Premier.
Like the lawyers and accountants you know who’d never live in strata in Queensland, perhaps you should consider if apartment living is for you. That’s what I’d do.
If you want to look further, google “Bullying in Strata Hynes Legal”. That should give you a choice of a law firm’s article on a chairperson bullying a caretaker and its webinar on bullying in strata.
The following advice is from a QLD perspective. Check with your local council and confirm the Development Approval change of condition as it relates to traffic circulation. You may be able to do this by filling out an online request on the council website.
It would help if you had the DA approval year and reference number before you contact the council. Council may provide some advice on how to proceed but … don’t count on it being anything other than general.
Be prepared for Local Council not being able to have its local laws rangers/ parking wardens take action on private property. This is usually the case with visitor parking (in QLD) but it may be different with a traffic circulation issue, don’t hold your breath though. Ditto for the local police station who may not have parking obstruction as a high priority.
If the DA condition checks out, you might be able to write a Motion for the committee to consider at its next meeting. This is the case in QLD. Your motion would involve action being taken to remove the obstruction caused by inconsiderate parking which contravenes the DA approval and the obstruction by-law.
Or you could simply write them a letter asking for reasons why some residents are allowed to park on common property as though it is their own exclusive use area in contravention of DA approval and the obstruction by-law.
Along with your motion or your letter, you could include the advice from your local council with regard to the original DA and the advice from the SM with regards to the obstruction of common property by-law applying.
The point to make to the committee is that it appears the committee is picking and choosing which by-laws it wants to enforce. Which would be unfortunate as the committee has little choice but to enforce or attempt to enforce the by-laws.
When, as seems likely, the committee does not attempt to remedy the parking situation, you have three choices. Continue to park on the street, park on the common property like the others or progress your complaint to NCAT. When lodging your complaint, stick to the one issue, parking obstruction, and provide copies of any correspondence between you and the committee, local council information, the relevant page of the DA, and your by-laws.
Given the response you received at your AGM, it might be pointless going through a conciliation step (as available in QLD) before proceeding to an adjudication.
The fact that you’ve raised the issue at the AGM may satisfy the requirement of self-resolution of a dispute before proceeding to NCAT. (Self resolution is a principle that applies as a first step in QLD.)
In our 69-Unit building in Qld, the building caretaker/manager is paid $98K indexed to the CPI. The manager bought the management rights off the developer for, I’m guessing, in excess of $500K. Having bought the management rights, our manager can sell those rights to someone else.
Our body corporate had to approve the present manager after he was interviewed by the committee, after our bc solicitor had perused the contract and given an opinon, and so on. Likewise, there would be a requirement for the body corporate to approve of the “next” manager subject to advice from our bc solicitor, contracted bc management company, etc.
Our son lives in a multi-stage complex with over 500 units. That complex has two contracted managers who would have to receive considerably more than $98K each, possibly around the $200K mark.
Our manager is contracted to carry out cleaning and maintenance of the common areas, lifts, pool, gymnasium, …, arrange for the repair and replacement of common property structures and plant equipment, be contactable 24 hours/day to deal with issues relating to fire safety, resident misbehaviours, etc., etc., as detailed in a comprehensive list of duties.
Our manager has rental rights on three units, another 20 are managed by external real estate agencies. He lives on site which means that he identifies with the apartment block, it’s in his interests to ensure that all plant equipment is operating as it should, etc. Our manager would’ve bought his unit for somewhere in the low $400K’s.
I’ve never experienced a manager who lives offsite although I have a friend who lives in a complex and rarely sights its manager. Maybe his manager llives offsite. I can’t see that its viable or desirable to have a manager who lives at another location.
As a contractor, the manager has to arrange his own superannuation & insurance. He has no holiday pay, sick leave, etc. because he is not an employee of the body corporate.
Being a bc contractor, the manager does not have to work 9-to-5, Monday to Friday. If his work for the day, as detailed in a table of duties, is completed in three hours, he can “clock off” and retire to our heated pool to sun bake if he so wishes. That our manager can be found working as early as 7.00 AM in the morning to as late as 9.30 PM, any day of the week, is an indication of the demands of the job and his commitment to his duties.
I experienced a month of caretaking duties in our apartment block (as a favour for a friend) when there was less than 50 per cent of units occupied. $98K/year would not be enough to tempt me to buy the management rights to our units.
Getting rid of a caretaker who is not doing a very good “job” can be difficult. Preventing a caretaker from getting a “pay rise” can be very difficult – if it goes to adjudication the end result will be the average of what the caretaker is seeking (based on his expert’s opinion) and what the body corporate is prepared to offer (based on its expert’s opinion).
Hi, Sonido. Sorry to arrive late to the party. One way for a committee to be “reasonable” is to give permission subject to conditions. Based on my experiences in Queensland, the control of your pet problem lies within the conditions imposed on the owner. For pets, the conditions could/should start off:
1. Pets must be registered with the local council according to local council sub-laws or regulations. A copy of the original registration form has to accompany the application to keep a pet.
(This copy would have to be verified by contacting the local council.)
2. Where more than one pet is involved, an application for permission to keep more than one pet in an apartment/unit has to be approved by the local council. A copy of that permission for more than one pet has to accompany the pet application.
(Our local council stipulates – one dog per unit, one cat per unit, etc. Which effectively blocks two dogs unless your local council dodges confrontation by deferring to body corporate bylaws. The copy of that permission would have to be verified by contacting the local council.)
As noted above by Peter C, pets should be on leads or leashed on common property, owners should pick up and dispose of their pet’s faeces by dropping the double bagged item and contents in the waste industrial bin, etc.
(Pet owners have been known to leave pet faeces on their balconies for a number of days which usually contravenes local council health regs.)
Other conditions could include:
3. Pets must be carried while in the foyer area of the apartment block e.g. from a lift to an entry door.
(This poses a problem for owners of large pets e.g. elephants.)
4. If there are residents on a lift that a pet owner and their pet wish to enter, the pet owner must ask those residents if they are comfortable with travelling on a lift with their pet. Where residents do not feel comfortable, the pet owner and pet must wait for another lift.
(This is aimed more at large or potentially dangerous dogs.)
5. Where the pet’s behaviour (e.g. barking or defaecating on its unit balcony) causes a nuisance to residents in other units, the pet owner will take steps to remedy the pet’s behaviour.
The bylaws should finish with something like –
“Where the above pet bylaws are contravened, the pet owner will be given notice to remedy the breach. Failure to remedy the breach in seven (?) days will require the pet owner removing the pet from their lot within 30 days.”
Blanket bans on pets in apartment blocks are very difficult to sustain under adjudication because each case has to be judged on its merit otherwise the committee can be deemed as acting unreasonably. It is far easier to impose conditions that are reasonable within themselves when taken singly but, in total, are very prescriptive and require the pet owner to be responsible.
Based on some adjudications I’ve seen in Qld., it is possible for a committee to give permission or approval or not after the event, as in your situation, without being in contravention of bc legislation. The fall back position that applies in “difficult” decisions is for the committee to refer the decision to an extraordinary general meeting where all the owners are given the opportunity to vote. Providing the motion is properly framed, not illegal, etc., adjudicators are very reluctant to over-rule a decision arrived at by all owners.
Good luck, George