ACT: How do you get, register and change the by-laws for your unit’s plan?

Question: How do you get the by-laws for your unit’s plan? How do you register new by-laws? How do you make changes to the by-laws?

Answer: With the legislative amendments released in November, an Owners Cooperation is now required to have a single set of consolidated rules.

Bylaws in the ACT are referenced as rules and with the legislative amendments released in November, an Owners Cooperation is now required to have a single set of consolidated rules. This in part will make it easier in time to obtain a copy of your house rules or your rule because there won’t be various copies all over the place.

Essentially, they should be readily available from your strata manager or your owners Corporation. The rules are part of the owners corporation’s records, so there’s no reason why owners can’t have a copy. In fact, they should be provided to all owners and all tenants as they occupy the building. The rules may also be available on the owners portal, if you have access to an owner’s portal.

If you’re looking at purchasing a new unit or you’re new to an Owners Corporation, the rules will also be included in your sales contract or your section 119 certificate. So they should be something which are very easily accessible to owners and residents.

In terms of registering new bylaws, a draft set of rules would need to be presented to a general meeting of all owners for their consideration, and once passed by a special resolution by the Owners Corporation, they can then be registered as a formal set of rules under the common seal of the corporation. An important thing to note is when you are changing rules, they have to be registered within three months of the resolution being passed. Otherwise, you have to go right back to the beginning of the process and pass that special resolution again.

Changing bylaws or rules is essentially exactly the same as the step before all the way through from presenting the draft right through to the process of registration with Access Canberra.

Nina Cannell
Signature Strata
E: nina@signaturestrata.com.au
P: 02 6185 0347