This article is about a 2025 QLD adjudication decision dismissing an application for alternative insurance approval under the Act.
Adjudicator’s Order – Mihi Grove [2025]
This adjudicator’s order is interesting for several reasons. As some of you may be aware, due to recent amendments to the legislation, adjudicators can now make orders relating to alternative insurance arrangements. This particular order was the first alternative insurance application considered by an adjudicator rather than the Commissioner.
The applicant was part of a body corporate subject to a government buy-back scheme due to the land being prone to flooding. The majority of the body corporate was owned by the local council; however, the body corporate was unable to obtain insurance for the full replacement value of certain building, as required by the regulation module.
Where a body corporate cannot get the required level of insurance but has received an offer of insurance which is partly compliant, it can request an order approving it to take up that alternative offer if it is as similar as practicable to the required insurance.
The applicant sought for the local council’s insurance to be approved as the alternative insurance, but the application was dismissed.
The adjudicator stated at [47] and [48]:
I have suggested above that, where there is only one proposal, whatever it offers may be enough to meet the ‘as similar as practicable’ test. However, I consider that the purported compliance must still have some substance, even if only to a small degree. Otherwise, approving a proposal involving no substantial compliance would seemingly render the alternative insurance provisions pointless.
In this case, where there is no substantial compliance with the required insurance, I am not satisfied that the proposed insurance is as similar as practicable to the required insurance, for the purposes of section 281A(2)(b) of the Act.
Importantly, the adjudicator was satisfied that the body corporate could not obtain the required insurance, but dismissed the application as they were not satisfied that the alternative insurance proposal met the requirement to be ‘as similar as practicable to the required insurance.’
View the full adjudicator’s order on AustLII
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This post appears in Strata News #753.
This article has been republished with permission from the author and first appeared on the BCCM’s Common Ground Issue 50 newsletter.
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Read next:
- QLD: Flood Insurance – A cause for disagreement in strata buildings
- QLD: Demystifying insurance excess
- QLD: Alternative Insurance
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