Visitor Parking: What can you do when residents abuse?

In our last blog we explained who can, and how they should, use visitor parking bays in a residential strata building.

What can you do when residents and owners abuse visitor parking bays in residential strata buildings?

Parking their own vehicles there excessively? 😡😡😡

There’s a series of things the Owners Corporation can legally do under regulations to stop this.

They do take time and effort, and you should follow the procedures very carefully. 

Some things Owners Corporations can do to control visitor parking bay usage.

1. Use parking signs, security guards, key card systems or parking bollards and barriers.
2. Pass a by-law to implement time and frequency limits on visitor parking
3. Pass a by-law that prohibits owners/ residents from parking anywhere on common property, for example in NSW there is Standard By-Law no.1 which many buildings adopt.
4. Communicate clearly with signage, on noticeboards and in the by-laws, about illegally parked cars before they try to remove them, 
5. Clarify expectations between by-laws and building rules, 
6. Enforce parking fines, after warnings and first-time offenses, 
7. Following certain procedures set out in the legislation,if entry/exit ways are obstructed,

1. Issue a Breach Notice and a Penalty

Most buildings have by-laws that deal with visitor parking. If your building does, a resident parking in the visitor parking bays is breaching the by-laws.

Your Owners Corporation can then serve them with a notice to comply (ie. MOVE their car and STOP parking in the visitor car parking in breach of our by-laws).

If they do it again, your Owners Corporation get NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal to issue a penalty of $1,100

And if they do it AGAIN within 12 months, then the NCAT penalty can double to $2,200.

This is all set out on the NSW Fair Trading site here.

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2. Tow the Offending Car

Breach notice failed? NSW Owners Corporations can tow the vehicle, following specific procedures, for persistent offending parkers.

Owners Corporation can remove left unattended cars in visitors’ parking under Section 125 of the Strata Schemes Management Act.

The process involves putting a removal notice on or near the car, followed by a 5 day waiting period. After that, the Owners Corporation can remove it. 

Our Step-By-Step Removal Guide

Place a removal notice on or near the car where the owner will see it.

Ensure that the removal notice meets these requirements:

• It’s on an A4+ size piece of paper.
• Put the removal notice somewhere it won’t be damaged by the weather.
• Describe the vehicle and the state, time, and date the removal notice was issued.
• Vehicle must be moved by specified deadline, or it will be removed from visitors’ parking area.
• Give contact details of a strata committee or Owners Corporation member they can reach. 

After notice expiry, Owners’ Corporation can relocate the vehicle to nearest legal parking spot on common property, avoiding entry/exit blockage

And of course, all care must be taken to make sure you don’t damage the vehicle.

3. Consider asking Council to patrol the parking area on a paid basis.

I know, it’s not ideal and no guarantee it will work. Consider the option provided by The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and section 650A of Local Government Act 1993. Consult Council to explore the possibility of a paid ranger service for patrolling the area and parking in your strata.

Why bother with the hassle when our easy and stress-free parking bollard solutions can solve this problem for you?

At thatsmyspot.com.au, we’re frequently approach to address the pain-point of visitor parking abuse. We believe that visitors’ parking is exactly that. Parking allocated for visitors, family, friends, tradies, and others as per initial building development application. It’s only when people abuse this privilege can get messy.

Penalty notices, towing, and Council patrols for strata parking are costly, time-consuming, and notably stressful options to consider. It’s notoriously challenging to find a tow truck that fits well in the majority of basement car parks.

At thatsmyspot.com.au, we experienced helping solve visitor parking issues in residential strata buildings and have a range of parking solutions with different price points to do this. To take the angst out of abuse of visitor parking bays BEFORE it occurs, rather than chasing people down after they continually abuse them.

Find out more about our parking solutions that we can use to help solve your pain points and address your particular situation and budget. 

Please Contact Us on 1300 644 533 so we can learn more about your particular situation and how we can help solve your visitor parking pain points with our fabulous range of automatic remote control parking bollards, manual parking bollards and smartphone parking bollards.

At thatsmyspot.com.au our motto is “Take the Stress out of Your Parking”  and this is what we’re really good at.