Breach of parking by-laws have been a common issue to almost every apartment building. This issue is becoming worse especially in the areas with new surging developments. Occupiers are using visitor car parks as additional parking spaces or in non-allocated parking areas. Furthermore, there are no car parks available for legitimate visitors of occupiers or repair/maintenance contractors.
ASM NSW team have developed a step-by-step approach to solve this issue. A 70-lot apartment building in Ryde previously experienced serious illegal parking issues. The strata manager followed this step-by-step procedure to solve the issue within a short period. Step-1 is to serve the breaching lot with a by-law notice and charge them an administration fee for issuing notices. Most breaches will cease once the breaching party starts receiving and paying breaches.
If the same lot which has previously been served with a notice continues to breach the by-law, the 2nd step will be triggered. By passing a resolution at a formal meeting, the strata manager is authorised to issue a notice to comply to the breaching lot and take legal action if necessary.
In this case the lot continued to breach after receiving the notice to comply, therefore the manager implemented step-3 by applying to NCAT for a monetary penalty. Through NCAT hearings the breaching lot was ordered to pay penalties to the owners corporation by NCAT member. Since the order was issued and the penalty was paid, the illegal parking issue was solved.
The owner corporation and residents were pleased with the outcome of the parking situation being resolved.
Rick Chang, ASM NSW.
