Are incorrect AGM minutes and voting procedures a breach of strata legislation?
Our AGM was held by teleconference. For electronic meetings, is the strata manager required to record the meeting? Should the manager clearly call for votes in favour of and against each resolution, and how should votes in electronic meetings be properly conducted and recorded?
A lot owner submitted a written resolution before the AGM and asked the manager to record the exact wording both at the meeting and in the minutes. The resolution wording was clear and required no correction, but the minutes recorded it inaccurately and not in line with the owner’s instructions. The minutes included incorrect statements made by the manager about a specific required undertaking. These errors have since been identified and can be proven.
In these circumstances, is the strata manager required to correct and reissue the minutes, and do these issues amount to a breach of the Act?
A manager must act honestly and in good faith.
If the AGM takes place via teleconference, there is no requirement to record it.
For voting at a meeting, the Owners Corporation Act 2006 notes that “a person may vote on a resolution of the owners corporation at a meeting by a show of hands or in another prescribed manner, unless the meeting resolves otherwise”. Assuming this is a simple show of hands vote, there is no further direction on how it should be conducted. A common practice in Victoria is for managers to ask if there are any objections or abstentions to the motion. If there are none, the vote has passed.
Incorrectly conveying or minuting a proposed resolution is not a breach of the Act specifically, though depending on the degree of error, it could be argued that the manager is not fulfilling section 122 of the Owners Corporation Act 2006. This section states that a manager must act honestly and in good faith. You could therefore put in a formal complaint against the manager.
The minutes form a record of the owners corporation. Therefore, they should be accurate. If the manager acknowledges the error, best practice is for them to send corrected minutes to all owners. If the manager does not agree that there is an error in the minutes, they need to be confirmed as accurate at the next meeting. Members of the owners corporation will be able to vote on whether they are accurate at the next AGM.
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Alex Smale has worked in the Owners Corporation Industry since 2015. She is a passionate advocate for sustainability and community within strata, previously working as a Sustainability Manager in the industry. She has served on the SCA Education committee and delivered education webinars for Look up Strata and SCA VIC. In 2019 Alex was awarded the Excellence Award from SCA VIC, she has also won two Excellence Awards for Environmental and Community Engagement and a SCA state and National Excellence Essay Award.
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