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Fiona McAllister was driving home from work when she ran a red light, narrowly avoiding a collision in broad daylight. She wasn’t distracted or under the influence; she says she was simply “functioning in a state of constant exhaustion”.
For three years, the Malvern East resident has been woken most mornings around 5.45am by what she describes as the “thumping and crashing” of a Pilates studio operating two floors beneath her bedroom.
Residents Fiona McAllister and Nick McCaffrey outside the Hedgeley development on Belgrave Road where Love Athletica is a tenant on the ground floor and they live in an apartment on the second floor.Waynet Taylor
“I just burst into tears,” McAllister said of the moment she realised how close she had come to a crash. “It’s a nightmare. It makes you feel crazy. My doctor wanted to put me on antidepressants.”
The dispute at the Hedgeley development on Belgrave Road has become the latest flashpoint in what advocates describe as a “state of anarchy” within Victoria’s strata laws.
Despite an independent noise report finding significant breaches and a formal notice being issued, a legal technicality known as the “75 per cent rule” has left residents powerless to enforce their own building rules.
McAllister and her husband, Nick McCaffrey, are among a number of residents who say their lives have been severely affected by the daily noise emanating from Love Athletica – a ground-floor fitness studio they claim has been operating in breach of its permit since 2019.
They describe instructors dragging heavy reformer machines and “sitting boxes” across bare concrete as early as 5.45am and dumbbells being dropped on the floor throughout the class. “As the warm-up finishes, they drop their weights … 3, 2, 1, and then bang!” McCaffrey said.
The couple have tried sleeping pills, white noise machines and meditation. They leave evening events early and cannot watch a film past 9.45pm as they know the thumping will begin at dawn.
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But residents are trapped in a three-way bureaucratic stymy between Stonnington Council, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA), and the state government’s strata laws.
City of Stonnington CEO Dale Dickson conceded to The Age the original 2018 permit for the gym was issued based on an application for a “Pilates studio” only, and did not include the use of weights or the dragging of heavy reformer machines. Because they weren’t in the application, the council says the noise from the weights and equipment “could not be regulated through permit conditions”.
Rather than directing the business to stop the unauthorised use of equipment, the council has granted Love Athletica multiple extensions to apply for a new permit.
Council officers also conducted multiple inspections, but claimed the site “did not result in an unreasonable impact on residential amenity”. Environment Protection Authority Victoria similarly told The Age it found no regulatory breach during a single unannounced inspection – at a time between scheduled classes. The agency has since advised that “structure-borne” noise impacts are a matter for the council, though it claims its investigation is “ongoing”.
However, an independent acoustics report commissioned late last year by the building’s owners corporation at a cost of $4000 relied on 48 hours of synchronised, continuous recording with microphones placed in McCaffrey and McCallister’s apartment and the gym.
The report, obtained by The Age, found the studio exceeded regulated night-period noise limits by 6 decibels and best-practice guidelines for gymnasiums by up to 17 decibels. It concluded that even “minor impacts” with the concrete floor, such as placing a dumbbell down softly, generated clearly audible noises in the apartments above.
Love Athletica, however, has remained firm. According to McCaffrey, the studio told him they did not want to install soundproof flooring because it would ruin their “look”. In a statement to The Age, co-founder Caroline Knipe said the business had a long-standing presence in the building and claimed it has faced “no material change to its operations” and “no prior complaints” since it opened. Resident impact statements seen by The Age cited informal complaints to the business as far back as 2019.
The ground-floor commercial lot is owned by billionaire Paul Little and managed by Nelson Alexander, who were served with a formal Notice to Rectify by the owners corporation in January. Both Little and Nelson Alexander were approached for comment.
Caroline Knipe, co-founder and studio designer of Love AthleticaLinkedIn
While the council and the EPA have told residents they should take VCAT action via their owners corporation, as reported last year by The Age, a new VCAT precedent has effectively lifted the bar for legal action by requiring 75 per cent of all residents in a building to vote in favour — a threshold nearly impossible to meet in large developments.
“The situation is farcical,” says Adam Promnitz of the Strata Owners Alliance. “The government over six months on still hasn’t fixed this crisis. This is a clear case the rules are intended to cover”.
The Allan government is now facing accusations of dragging its feet on strata reform, despite pushing a high-density agenda for Melbourne. An independent review into strata laws was handed to Consumer Affairs Minister Nick Staikos in December 2025, but four months on remains unreleased.
The Age applied under freedom of information laws to access the report, but was denied in full. The refusal cited cabinet privilege, claiming the document was prepared specifically for cabinet consideration.
Opposition consumer affairs spokesman Tim McCurdy said the Liberals had also lodged an FOI request. “There is no good reason for it to still be hidden … Victorians deserve transparency, not secrecy,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Government Services said the government is “carefully considering” the report and will have more to say “in due course”.
After approaching all available agencies and bodies, including ward councillor Jami Klisaris and local MP Michael O’Brien, McCaffrey and McAllister are at the end of their tether.
“Three years we’ve been having these conversations about [whether] we stay,” McAllister said. “Not one person has listened to us. We just want to live a quiet life”.
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Rachael Dexter is a journalist in the City team at The Age. Contact her at rachael.dexter@theage.com.au, rachaeldexter@protonmail.com, or via Signal at @rachaeldexter.58Connect via Facebook or email.From our partners