Midlife crisis wrote:Hey guys.
We are in Brisbane and wondering if anyone knows of a cheap shed and storage or a share shed going anywhere from Ormeau to Ipswich to Brisbane.
Our darling new neighbour has put in a complaint that we and friends spend time working on our cars in the backyard and apparently according to Council, you can't do this. We do not make excessive noise and the other neighbours do not have a problem, but apparently one complaint and you are gone. We have even just received an approval to build a shed in the backyard a shed to do the bits and pieces in.......well, we are cancelling it tomorrow. There is no reason to have a shed when you can't do anything in it. Have a carport to put the cars in so why do I need a shed now.
We now have three weeks to get rid of all the cars, parts etc. or find a shed that we can rent cheaply to do this in and store our bits.
Please, if there is anyone out there that can help please call us on 3805 2038 or 0410 920 488.
Any help or leads would be greatly appreciated.
Marc and Kathy
Hi Guys,
Firstly let me say I have never dealt with the Logan City Council, my experience is with Pine Rivers Shire Council (PRSC) but I am guessing that they are a similar organisation.
A few questions for you:
What zoning is your house in ?
Is your house part of an estate which has covenants / special planning permission etc ?
What violation have they hit you with ?
Presuming they have hit you with something like the PRSC “Unsightly Accumulation Law “ which basically states that the Council Inspector can deem anything unsightly that he wishes to without qualification or justification this usually gives you 3 options:
1. Removal of the said unsightly storage
2. Obscuration from view, from ground level, ie covering, concealing etc
3. Tidying of the said unsightly storage so that it is not unsightly anymore.
Potential fixes
- Build a 1.99m high fence around your back yard such that the neighbours can not see in, make sure you check your council laws in relation to this fence height.
- Build a shed and keep stuff in it
- Buy a heap of cheap ass tarps or car covers and cover it up.
- Remove the unsightly accumulation
Ok in relation to working on your own vehicle at your place of residence you are allowed to carry out such maintenance if done so in a shed or out of sight ie the back yard with a fence around it. You are not allowed to do it in a front carport, etc. In fact under the new laws you can not conduct such maintenance in your front garage if the door is up.
Now you have mentioned the January due date, stand by for a lesson in making bureaucracy work for you.
Step 1 – Get the letter / notification that the council inspector has sent you, read it over and look for any stupid mistakes or questionable statements. Once you find some, and you will, ring them up and ask stupid questions, after you have politely confused who ever you are talking to or convinced them you are confused you simply suggest that you put your questions in writing and send them in for a written response from council.
Step 2 – You write the said letter using the telecom you had with the council employee as your reference. You ask your questions and send it away registered post. It is important that you use the details of the person you spoke to and use registered post. Log this event down along with all other details.
Step 3 – you wait for your response. Usually you ring them the following week talk to anyone who answers the phone and log their details to show you followed up.
Step 4 – your response arrives, first thing you do is ring whoever wrote the response, by now they will probably be on holidays etc, if they are unavailable, simply leave a message and log the time of call and who you spoke to. If you do get hold of them, tell them you have a few options to sort their issues with your cars and will send them a letter outlining the actions you are going to take to rectify, be nice and make then understand you are really trying to make things right. They will agree and usually consent to the fact they have to approve the actions and confirm they will achieve and acceptable outcome.
Step 5 – you write your letter and outline that you intend to buy a heap of tarps and keep the stuff covered and out of sight. In the letter they sent your originally it will have certain wording, just spew this back at them. Make sure in your letter you put some stupid date like feb, mar etc as it will take you time to carry out your rectification programme. Then send it off again registered mail.
Step 6 – they will contact you and you can stuff around a little longer, be picky in relation to anything you can think about, you basically just want to bog down the system, talk to heaps of different people who don’t know each other and leave as many messages as possible.
Step 7 – eventually you will have to do something to sort it, if you already have approval for a shed then this will keep the council at bay anyway as it shows you are making an effort.
Anyway I guess that gives you the idea.
Without getting into legal mumbo jumbo the idea is to keep in contact and maintain correspondence with the council, whilst correspondence is being maintained they can not legally proceed without terminating it.
In case you are wondering I have been through this many times, the best so far was around 2 years worth of pissing them around and eventually the neighbour who was complaining moved house.
I would also visit all your neighbours and tell them about the complaint, ask them if it was them and if they say no produce a letter which states they have no issue and you are a reat neighbour, get them to sign it and say you are submitting a response to council. This will show you who complained so you can target them, obviously only with legal methods.
Once you have found out who they are you can have fun with them. Options are not limited to but could include.
- parking your registered cars outside their house and not yours.
- Parking on their drive way, not across but on and then walking up and knocking on their door say hello and walk away, then you are just visiting. Most council laws do not have anyway way to remove a registered car which is parked on the driveway over the foot path as it is the designated property access. It is a PITA to get the car moved as it is not theory property so they can’t get you towed and the council own it so they need to do the towing, but since you are not illegally parked they can’t tow you anyway. So you get the point.
- Buy a cheap ass box trailer with rego and put it outside their house, then remove one wheel and leave it on blocks. At $60 odd dollars a year it will piss them off no end and there is nothing they can do, you just haven’t gotten around to getting the tyre fixed, maybe even throw some rubbish in for added effect.
- Etc etc etc
There is plenty of things you can do to legally piss people off and bog the system down.
Don’t give into the council they don’t actually care they are just following their own stupid rules so just play along with them.
