QLD: Q&A Body Corporate Committee Communications

This Q&A article is about effective software platform for body corporate committee communication.

Table of Contents:

• QUESTION: Does the caretaker have the discretion to communicate directly with a specific group of owners without including the committee and body corporate manager?
• QUESTION: If owners contact the BCM directly and the body corporate is charged, can the fee be charged to the owner?
• QUESTION: Does a Committee have to respond to an owner’s general communications?
• QUESTION: Our committee intends to hold an open forum to discuss motions and the associated costs of the motions they intend to put to our AGM. As non-owners may attend, should financials be discussed?
• QUESTION: What communication platforms work well for body corporates to effectively manage discussions, email documents, budget deliberations etc among committee members?

Question: Does the caretaker have the discretion to communicate directly with a specific group of owners without including the committee and body corporate manager?

Our body corporate manager (BCM) advises that all caretaker newsletters to owners must CC all committee members and the BCM if the content relates to body corporate matters or common property maintenance. Is this a legal requirement or a recommended practice?

Does the caretaker have the discretion to communicate directly with a specific group of owners without including the committee and BCM? For example, if a tree falls and affects only two lots, is the caretaker required to notify the two owners, plus CC all committee members and the BCM? We are seeking clarification on the obligations regarding caretaker communications.

Answer: Check the contract with your caretaker to see if there are any clauses that mandate how they should communicate with owners.

Check the contract with your caretaker to see if there are any clauses that mandate how they should communicate with owners. If there is something that stipulates this, fine. I’m guessing there won’t be and that the caretaker is not required to communicate in a specific way.

Also ask your body corporate manager to support their requirement with evidence or state they are just offering an opinion. An opinion on what constitutes best practice is fine, but that’s quite different from a requirement. If it is a requirement, the body corporate manager should be able to demonstrate why.

Beyond this, you might speak to your caretaker. It makes sense that they need to communicate with different people at different times. As you indicate, sometimes they might need to speak to just a few owners. Sometimes, there might be a reason to communicate with the whole body corporate. Sometimes, they may want to communicate with their letting pool owners. If you have a good relationship with the caretaker, adjusting communication based on needs shouldn’t be too hard. If the relationship is more difficult, you may have to adjust accordingly. In this case, that may mean the body corporate controls communications with owners.

William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924

This post appears in Strata News #741.

Question: If owners contact the BCM directly and the body corporate is charged, can the fee be charged to the owner?

Our committee assists where possible in reducing fees. However, some owners continually contact the body corporate manager (BCM) directly instead of first contacting the committee. If the committee can assist, this would avoid additional BCM service fees.

If owners contact the BCM directly and the body corporate is charged, can the fee be charged to the owner? It is unfair for owners who do not contact the BCM to pay these fees.

Answer: You can’t transfer these costs without seeking a court order.

Many owners ask this question, and the default response is that you can’t transfer these costs without seeking a court order – from the Commissioner’s office or QCAT. As the time and expense of achieving that is usually higher than any fees applied, most people don’t do this – or if they seek a costs order, they aren’t always successful.

Thinking a bit more proactively, I believe the body corporate is within its rights to send an invoice to the owner requesting they pay unreasonable costs incurred by the body corporate. This would be a request only, though, and if the owner didn’t pay, I don’t think you could follow this up as a debt. However, sending an invoice like this from time to time may be sufficient to make your point.

Some consideration also needs to be given to the circumstances and why people are contacting the body corporate manager.

The appointment of the manager was a decision of the body corporate, and it is not surprising that owners will contact the manager in the first instance – having such a person available is one of the reasons owners will have voted to appoint a manager. Owners may not feel comfortable contacting the committee or want to speak to the manager as they can offer independent advice. In turn, that manager is probably helping those owners navigate the body corporate system by providing them with information and assistance about their scheme. This doesn’t seem bad, and body corporate should be budgeting for expenses like this. The committee could instruct the body corporate manager not to respond and only to forward comments to the committee, but this approach seems counterproductive.

On the other hand, you may have a situation where one or two owners are constantly causing problems or contacting the body corporate manager. If unnecessary fees take up a substantial amount of time, it may be reasonable to look at how to limit this. Strategies to do this should be discussed with the manager and that could include looking to transfer the costs if that was thought to be an effective strategy.

William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924

This post appears in the December 2024 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.

Question: Does a Committee have to respond to an owner’s general communications?

Answer: The body corporate does not have to: read, respond, table, or action any general communications.

There seem to be many ‘energised’ owners who write too many emails and who test the resolve of volunteer committee members to remain on committees.

Nothing in the legislation requires the body corporate to take any action in response to an owner’s general communications. The body corporate does not have to: read, respond, table, or action any general communications.

No by-law or general meeting resolution is required to entitle the committee to disregard communications.

However, while that is the legal position, a committee:

1. should always review the correspondence to make sure that the correspondence does not:
   
   • warn of a dangerous situation or
   • contain the exercise of a statutory right, such as seeking to inspect documents or requesting a motion be placed on an agenda, etc; and

2. is unlikely to be too popular if it ignores all correspondence.

This is a different approach to responding to abusive and/or onerous correspondence, which seeks to limit the correspondence being sent.

Peter Hunt
Mathews Hunt Legal
E: peter.hunt@mathewshuntlegal.com.au

This post appears in the July 2024 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.

Question: Our committee intends to hold an open forum to discuss motions and the associated costs of the motions they intend to put to our AGM. As non-owners may attend, should financials be discussed?

Our complex consists of 140 units under the Accommodation Module and the Building Format Plan.

Our committee intends to hold a forum, open to all residents, to discuss motions and the associated costs of the motions they intend to put to our AGM in June this year.

Should body corporate financial matters be discussed with non-owners who will be present?

Is the forum an informal meeting?

If the committee presents attendees with false or misleading information, can the committee be held accountable for negligence and if so, what action could be taken by owners to address this?

Answer: Depending on what the meeting is about and who is running it, it may be appropriate to hold some of the financial details back.

There is no issue with the committee holding an information session. Indeed, trying to engage the occupants of your scheme sounds like a good thing.

It is not necessarily bad if non-owners attend. In some states, it is a legislative right. Tenants contribute to the smooth running of a building, and it may be useful to give them direct information at a session like this or gain an understanding of what is and isn’t working at the building from them .

Still, as you indicate, this is an informal session, so no hard decisions can be made. It may be helpful to hear from tenants to some degree, but ultimately, they won’t be the ones making the decisions. Depending on what the meeting is about and who is running it, it may be appropriate to hold back some of the financial details. It would be up to the people running the meeting, the committee, to be judicious about this.

In terms of providing false or misleading information, do you have a reason to think this might happen? If committee members deliberately do this, there may be some repercussions, although most likely, it would depend on the information presented as a formal vote. However, the fact that you suggest this in advance implies you are expecting this to some degree. If so, there may be bigger issues that probably can’t be resolved within the context of this question.

Bear in mind that committee members aren’t held to an absolute standard. If someone makes a few errors of speech while presenting, that’s not the same as being deliberately misleading. And, if it is just a matter of other people seeing an issue differently from you, that is not the same as providing misleading information. Still, if you think there is another side of an issue to discuss and the committee won’t present it, perhaps you could ask for a few minutes at the meeting to address attendees and give a different opinion. Alternatively, you could arrange a meeting with owners to present your information.

William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924

This post appears in Strata News #693.

Question: What communication platforms work well for body corporates to effectively manage discussions, email documents, budget deliberations etc among committee members?

Are body corporates effectively using business communication platforms to manage discussions, email documents, budget deliberations, etc, among committee members? Businesses use Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace and Slack. What works well for body corporate committees?

Answer: If the committee and body corporate manager are committed to making these platforms work, they can be useful tools to streamline decision-making.

William Marquand, Tower Body Corporate:

Effective communication is what every body corporate owner says they want and what every body corporate manager says they provide. However, we still live in a world where miscommunication is a standard rather than a rarity.

As you indicate, many businesses have moved on from email as their only or main form of communication, using various alternative systems depending on their needs. Many body corporates do something similar, such as sharing messages across social media or other management platforms. The success of these largely depends on the users. If the committee and body corporate manager are committed to making these platforms work, they can be useful tools to streamline decision-making. On the other hand, if people aren’t interested, it doesn’t matter what platform you try. You can only do so much if owners and committee members are apathetic. If you think a program would work for your scheme, give it a go. It would also be good to hear from owners in the comments about what platforms they have tried and whether these are successful.

In my experience, there are two key issues with alternative platforms. Firstly, most of them aren’t designed for strata, so they can be helpful, but they also have limitations in terms of their practicality. Then, you need to consider record keeping – there is an obligation to maintain strata records. While generally good systems are in place to keep email records and meeting papers, that is often not the case for things like a WhatsApp chat. I don’t think this precludes using these systems, but it is something to consider.

Strata-specific apps are certainly a growth area. Many body corporate companies use systems like Strata Vote, Vote Max or Vote Now for recording meetings, and they are a huge leap forward from the not-so-old days when managers collated vast reams of paperwork to tally votes. Most individual companies will also have online portals providing varying interactions. They all give you access to documents, but some can also provide chat boards and other facilities to promote discussion. A few specific apps have been developed for strata. We use Resvu as part of our business. It saves the strata manager time while providing owners with quick, easy access to information.

These platforms offer back-end support to management companies, allowing them to provide a site-specific app for each scheme. Over the next couple of years, this technology will become standard and hopefully move us closer to the ultimate goal of seamless communication.

Brett Baillie, Resvu:

A small number of targeted technology solutions in the market effectively unite management companies, body corporates, owners, and residents. They may include features like a committee hub, request workflows, resident hub, proactive communication, levy notifications, payment gateways, and more.

Considering interconnectivity and integrations is crucial when evaluating a tech stack beyond a comprehensive industry-specific solution. While numerous excellent tools are available in isolation, the key is how they interconnect and offer visibility across all stakeholders while meeting your compliance requirements for documentation. If you have the time and internal resources to build and maintain a solution specific to your business using these individual tools, that’s fantastic. For everyone else, there are industry specific solutions.

William Marquand
Tower Body Corporate
E: willmarquand@towerbodycorporate.com.au
P: 07 5609 4924

Brett Baillie
Resvu
E: brett@resvu.io

This post appears in Strata News #685.

Have a question about body corporate committees or something to add to the article? Leave a comment below.

Read next:

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