This article is about who receives the fee for providing a body corporate information certificate.
Question: If a body corporate has a strata manager, and the manager provides the Certificate, who receives the income?
Does legislation require a body corporate to charge a fee for a certificate, or can they provide it gratis? If a body corporate has a strata manager, and the manager provides the Certificate, who receives the income? The manager or the body corporate?
Answer: The fee for the certificate goes to the body corporate as payment for the ‘service’ of providing the Certificate.
I am going to assume you are referring here to a body corporate information certificate as opposed to any other record or information.
The requirements for this certificate are provided for in Section 205(4) of the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 – reproduced below:
- The body corporate must, within 7 days after receiving a written request from an interested person accompanied by the fee prescribed under the regulation module applying to the scheme, issue a certificate (a body corporate information certificate) in the approved form applying to the scheme giving financial and other information about the lot.
You will note above that the ‘body corporate’ must provide the Certificate. Given this is a prescribed fee (i.e., a fee that the government sets), it would follow it is a fee that goes to the corporate body as payment for the ‘service’ of providing the Certificate. That said, the agreement between the body corporate and the body corporate manager may provide for the manager to be reimbursed for their time in providing this service on behalf of the body corporate.
As for your query about ‘gratis’, well I suppose it is feasible that most things in life could be provided gratis. The question would always be why it should be provided gratis. In this case, firstly, remember that the purpose of the Certificate is to add clarity to a proposed purchase of a lot. A business transaction, in other words. Such things do not typically come for free. Secondly, if you are asking if there are provisions for discounts or gratis for hardship, then the answer is no. The legislative section above is worded so that if the prescribed fee isn’t provided, the Certificate cannot be given. In other words, the fee is an inherent part of the request for the Certificate.
This is general information only and not legal advice.
Chris Irons
Strata Solve
E: chris@stratasolve.com.au
P: 0419 805 898
This post appears in the October 2024 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.
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BC manager issues invoices on their name with manager’s bank account. Government fees to provide body corporate Certificate are paid by an interested person into that manager’s bank account. These fees never been transferred into the body corporate bank account. The same way is with a fee for the access to the body corporate records (inspection fee, fee for a copy) paid interested person. By other words, an interested person buys a copy of the body corporate records from the BC Manager, although the Manager does not owns them, as records belong the body corporate. I believe it is not correct and it lasts with a new BC Manager as well. Would be there only one option to resolve these issues to amend a motion of previous Engagement and with attached amended Agreement at the next AGM? Thank you.
Hi Helena
We have just received this reply back from William Marquand, Tower Body Corporate:
As you indicate the fees charged by body corporate managers for access to records are a legislated matter.
The costs are a reflection not of who owns the records but of the costs involved in providing them.
For managing agencies these are the costs of providing staff, systems and workspaces in which these records can be provided. And many managers will say that the payments they do receive don’t cover the true total of those costs.
If you don’t agree with this then you are entitled to your opinion, but I’m not sure what the alternatives are. It’s a fixed system established and regulated by government that all stakeholders in the system operate under. Change to the system is made at a government level not by individual managing agencies.
Perhaps you could find a management agency that would make an agreement with you to withdraw the clauses around information provision in their contract with you – that is agree that they wouldn’t provide this service. In that case the responsibility would default to the committee. Is that feasible from an information provision standpoint or what other committee members want? Maybe, but my intuition is that a solution like this would cause more problems than it solves.
More practically you don’t have to have a manager – your scheme can self-manage. Why don’t you put that proposal to other owners and see what they think?
William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
W: towerbodycorporate.com.au
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
T: 07 5609 4924
This information is not intended to be personal advice and you should not rely on it as a substitute for any form of advice.