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Help needed.....We are desperate.
Midlife crisis - December 10th, 2007 at 08:05 PM

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

LOWBUG - December 10th, 2007 at 08:11 PM

Sounds like you need to start a terorist campaign on your neigbours. BASTARDS.

OZ Towdster - December 10th, 2007 at 08:16 PM

Have you aprouched the complaintant as they may with draw there complaint if you can all come to a mutual agreement

Midlife crisis - December 10th, 2007 at 08:30 PM

There is nothing we can do by talking to him......the council have been here, taken photos of the vehicles and parts and told us what cars we can keep... Sons drive car, our baja / daily driver, the kombi we bought to do up (but she did take photos of all sides of it and said we cannot work on it and it has to look exactly the same the next time she visits) and our type 3. Everything else must be gone from the yard by the second week in January. Hence the shed hunting.

If the neighbour had approached us with the problem we would have come to some agreement.

The working on the cars is a hobby of Marcs, Michaels and Dereks.......and now that hobby has been virtually destroyed.

frenzix - December 10th, 2007 at 08:38 PM

mate im with you on killing complaining neighbours..

OZ Towdster - December 10th, 2007 at 08:40 PM

I would get an opinion from legal aid on the councils stand over tactics as they cannot stop you if you are not accepting payment for works which i don't believe you would be and are not making essesive noise for long periods of time or out of hours .

VDUBXTC - December 10th, 2007 at 10:11 PM

I would have to agree with Andrew on this one mark.
I would say the people next door know someone in the local council. last time i saw your yard it was pretty tidy.
I would continue with the shed though. council can not tell you what you can and can't have in your own shed. you can get in shit for operating a business from your property without authorisation or making noise outside the restricted time frames.

Midlife crisis - December 10th, 2007 at 10:14 PM

Good point. Might give my RACQ free legal advice a go, although we were told by the council that someone else in our circumstances tried to go the court route and actually lost his 2 car storage rights (of unregistered cars) by the Judge in the judgement which went against him. He did hot rods as his hobby.

We were told that the only work we could do at home was to change oil, sparkplugs and tyres and emergency repairs to move it so it could be moved to a place where it is zoned for motor repairs. If we break something in the baja, we have nowhere to fix it! We were told we cannot replace engines or gearboxes.

Which is technically a crock, soooo many people fix their own cars........so watch your neighbours, people

555bug - December 10th, 2007 at 10:21 PM

organize a BBQ and invite the Hells Angels, tell them you'll put on a keg every weekend for a few months. The price of entry = lots of noise burnouts in your neighbors yard and general stand over tactics :), people just have to much to loose by being pricks, perhaps you need to remind them.

Brian - December 10th, 2007 at 10:34 PM

Thats a croc of shit ,the council can't enforce that

Volkswagenboy - December 10th, 2007 at 10:53 PM

Which neighbour? I'll do a burnout, lawn jobbies, egg and toilet paper their house!
Marc, sorry about the phonecall before... the telephone ariel on my truck was unplugged!
I'll take a look around near where dad and I have our workshop, maybe there's something nearby.
It sucks how d*ckheads who usually are worthless peices of sh*t suddenly have the right to tell you what you can and can't do in your own back yard.
My parents were fined a rediculous amount around 6 years back just for parking one of dads prime movers in our yard every night... apparently we couldn't do it because it wasn't zoned for industrial use... I mean wtf?
It took alot but they eventually had the fine lifted, so just fight it and you could win your right to the typical Aussie backyard.
-Staggers.

Boozer - December 10th, 2007 at 11:40 PM

That sucks! You should be able to fight that one. I'd say you could chuck it all up at my parents farm but that's outside of warwick. Not really practical. If my neighbours ever said anything we'd be screwed, 9.5 cars and only 5 of them on the road.

Andy - December 10th, 2007 at 11:50 PM

Sorry to hear Marc, hope you can find a compromise!!
Like many of us on the forum, by those rules we'd all be banned from the back yard.

shaihulud - December 11th, 2007 at 02:44 AM

I'm sure they can't be that excessive.

Council by-laws only have power if they comply with the state laws that they are based upon. Check to see what the state laws are before doing anything else.

You certainly should get some legal advice.

Does Queensland have a Land and Environment Court? Councils have very bad success rates in such courts.

Also I doubt if your neighbour is complying with all the council regulations. Most of us are in breach of something. Find it and the talk to him about people who live in glass houses and the throwing of stones.

Tazz - December 11th, 2007 at 06:21 AM

Marc.... I have a 3mX3m garden shed thats doin nothing at derek's dads place if that helps. I was thinking of selling it but if you want to use it till you get other places to store stuff its fine.
just give me a ring.

Tazz

Brad - December 11th, 2007 at 07:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Midlife crisis
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.

ancientbugger - December 11th, 2007 at 07:56 AM

I was going to say that exact thing!!:D

ancientbugger - December 11th, 2007 at 07:59 AM

BTW my sister lives at Shailer Park -not sure if that comes under Logan City but she has 5 kids, her and her husband and all together have 9 cars at their place, agreed they're not wrecks or anything but what makes an eyesore to neighbours?

h - December 11th, 2007 at 08:10 AM

bleedin heck thats a rough deal been handed out.. follow that up
sounds like 1930's germany to be honest??

rocknrob - December 11th, 2007 at 08:42 AM

Geez Brad...and you are not even a pretty face:crazy: That was all great advice and i'm going to save it somewhere in case the beaureacrats ever catch up with me:grind:

BiX - December 11th, 2007 at 08:56 AM

I have to deal with council most weeks with my work, and its does really suck. First of all, I would at all times, keep a well maintained attitude (eg don't start to rant and rave), unless you know its the persion signing the letter. As most ppl you speak to on the phone you want on your side.

do not cancel the shed yet....

Next i would send in a letter asking for clafication on exactly what by-laws you have breached, saying that you wish to get full information so any mitigation is up to standard etc... This will see of its jsut some neighbour with a friend in council.

then follow brad advice, keep phone records, ring up and ask questions and send letters saying your undertaking works to fix the issue. Without knowing the specific bylaw thats at stake here, i can't really give any specfic advice. But also if you ring up and normally talk to a higher up person in a nice way, and say its a hobby, we don't make money from it, we have jsut had approval for a shed (tell them the approval number etc) they are normally more than willing to listen. Most ppl in council are nice and willing to help, you jsut have to be nice to them, and be logical and sensible in you plans and disscussion.

As soon as you piss the council off.... you might as well give up they will jsut get more and more stubborn...

Midlife crisis - December 11th, 2007 at 12:15 PM

thanks everyone for the great ideas and advice.

This all happened yesterday afternoon about 230pm, the Development Control Officer that came to the house said that she was going back to her office to write up the report of our meeting then she would pass it on to her boss who will then send out a letter stating what we have done wrong and what has to be done. I am about to ring the Qld Council Ombusdman and have a talk to them.We have also sent a letter asking for a copy of the Council bylaws so we can read for our selfs.

Just got of the phone from Ombusdman when I get the letter from the council I have to write to the Councils Chief Officer explaining what I am not happy with in the letter, when I get a response the Councils Chief Officer if I am still not happy I have to write to the Ombusdman with copys of all letters sent and receviced from the Council and point out what i am not happy with and then they will check everything out and get back to me.

So it looiks like a long draw out time ahead.

As Brad said make sure I sound confused well for me that won't be hard all!!! I am always confused its just the depth that changes.


Thanks

Marc & Kathy

jo_tas - December 11th, 2007 at 01:52 PM

Wow.. the world really has gone mad!
I hope it all works out in favour of you.. and the neighbor gets something nasty coming to them for putting you though all this!
Karma is a bitch, you know..

Midlife crisis - December 11th, 2007 at 03:29 PM

Below is the answer we got when we ask by email for a copy of the local/council laws.

Three of us have seached through the area on the web page and can not find the part that he is quoting from.

Good Afternoon Emeline,

Council's Town Planning Scheme regulates the operation of a business in a residential zone.
You are able to access it on Council's website at http://www.logan.qld.gov.au  in Planning & Development On-line.
You will not get an approval under the current scheme for a vehicle repair business.
Vehicle repairs on residential premises are limited to the day-to-day maintenance of a vehicle owned by an occupier of the premises which is normally driven and parked for use by the occupier of the premises.

Regards,


So I will be going down to the council and asking for a copy of the local laws regarding this matter.

Marc

BiX - December 11th, 2007 at 04:08 PM

Personally I would wait and do what brad suggested (reply in letter and ask for them then, and record all letters and emails), they will (should!) reference the bylaws and policies in the letter to you, and wait to see what the specific thing is they are pulling you up on.

silver - December 11th, 2007 at 05:37 PM

Are you doing bodywork????
I must admit that I would be pissed of with someone working on Car's "all the time" next door to me, especially if it is bodywork, imagine bog dust and fumes from paint.
I would stop them as well

I do all the work on my cars in my garage only mechanical though and there is no noise.

LIFE IN THE LOW LANE - December 11th, 2007 at 05:45 PM

My cousin had to move out of the house he was renting due to him working on his 4WD tour vehicles in the massive shed in the backyard. He knew the owners of the property and they gave him the ok to do it but a neighbour complained about the noise.(He didn't make any noise after 7pm and before 7am.) Council came around while he wasn't home and entered the property and took pics and made a list of the vehicles etc etc then hit him with a letter etc stating he had 3 weeks to remove all the vehicles and spares. He had to go and hire a shed in Beenleigh to operate from and couldn't afford to do that and rent a house so moved in with his brother. He knew which neighbour it was so for the last 3 weeks he was there he deliberately worked till very late with the shed doors open and made as much noise as he could just to upset them. They rang the council again and complained so council came out and went throught all the crap with him. My cousin politely told them to get off the property as they were tresspassing and that he had 2 weeks to comply of which he would continue working up until that date.

Unfortunately for the Logan council they couldn't really do a thing about it....

If you think Logan is bad try living in Ipswich shire as the rules there are stricter again.


I personally would ask your neighbours if they had a problem with it and if they do ask them what they would like to see done about it. Some may just want cars for spare parts hidden out of sight or something like that. If you keep things tidy and out of sight then you will not be harassed by neighbours or council for that matter.

bajachris88 - December 11th, 2007 at 05:52 PM

hey Marc, these are not the idiot neighbours that yelled out shut up to that angle grinder noise they thought were you when i popped ova last weekend was it?

btw, the box trailer idea, with one tyre and full of crap is a MAD AWESOME IDEA!
invite the relatives in a carvan ova too... will sort them out ;)

aussiebaja - December 11th, 2007 at 06:09 PM

mate do they have a dog ?you could allways complain about it barking all the time for some payback

13BVW - December 11th, 2007 at 06:13 PM

Unfotunately Logan council are the WORST. A well know drag racer can't even take his car off its trailer after a race meet and roll it into the shed after a cetain time due to there laws as for Ipswich being stricter I highly doubt that(a lot of friends in ippy council) and they cant stand anyone from Logan council with they crazy rules who come over.