You might have heard that the Queensland law which regulates body corporate administration (legislation) has recently changed. The new legislation came into effect from the 1st of March 2021.
This new legislation applies to all body corporate communities in Queensland, with only a few exceptions.
The Queensland body corporate legislation was first introduced in 1997, and had a minor update in 2008. As you can imagine the way body corporate communities operate is quite different now, more than 20 years after the current laws were introduced.
Most of the changes are simple clarifications of existing best-practice. As BCsystems is a leading strata management team with over 25 years in business, the changes are automatically incorporated into our processes.
Below is a summary of the changes that you may notice.
Our owners are increasingly realising the advantages of receiving body corporate communication by email instead of post. Receiving body corporate communication also enables access to BCsystems electronic voting system – which we offer free to our clients.
Action: BCsystems will communicate directly with owners who are eligible for email communication in more detail in the coming weeks.
Previously there was no clear timeline around when a committee should consider an application or motion from an owner. The law has now brought in a 6-week deadline for a committee to consider an owner request, unless there is a reasonable extension required by the committee.
Action: BCsystems’ new website has been built to incorporate new forms. Our new forms for owners to make applications to their committees for pets, air-conditioning, general improvements and renovations, and any other requests. These improved forms assist owners to give complete applications with all the right information.
We are also providing additional support to committees to streamline consideration of requests – to achieve faster decisions for owners.
The old and complicated process around motions with alternatives has been replaced with same-issue motions. Now when any two or more motions deal with the same topic (example – multiple quotes for work, or multiple options to deal with an issue), those will be considered as same-issue motions.
Action: BCsystems has updated our AGM documents to include an easy guide on voting for these motions. BCsystems electronic voting already integrates these same-issue motions seamlessly.
There are plenty of other procedural changes in the new regulations – our team has spent months working through these to ensure our documents and procedures take each change into account.
The benefit of working with an experienced industry-leader BCsystems is that we have these legal changes covered.
By-laws are the set of regulations established by a body corporate to oversee and regulate how a body corporate should operate. Your scheme’s by-laws are found in Schedule C of your body corporate’s Community Management Statement (CMS).
Many body corporate decisions are decided by vote at either an annual general meeting or an extraordinary general meeting. This article looks at the different types of resolutions and the criteria required to determine an outcome.
