QLD: Q&A Freezing Levy Payments to Protest Bad Service

Published December 5, 2019 By Frank Higginson, Hynes Legal 3 Comments Last Updated September 2, 2020

This article about freezing levy payments in protest of bad service has been supplied by Frank Higginson, Hynes Legal.

Question: Can a group of lot owners freeze levy payments by paying their levies into a trust account until they receive better service from the resident manager and strata manager?

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A number of Lot owners within a Body Corporate Scheme are unhappy with the services provided (or lack thereof) by the Resident Manager and the Strata Company. The Committee isn’t instructing the Resident Manager to fix a number of issues raised by concerned Lot owners. Can the Lot owners affected put their Body Corporate Levies into a trust account type situation in protest until these issues are fixed and or performance is rectified?

In this situation, the Resident Manager (although not supposed to according to the Code of Conduct) hand picked a new Committee. The new Committee and the Strata Company are now basically being run by the Resident Manager, instead of the other way around. Therefore this has created continual conflict between a number of Lot owners, the current committee and the Resident Manager. Anything asked of the Committee or the Resident Manager by certain Lot owners just falls on deaf ears.

Lot owners do not want to go down the expensive track of climbing Mount Everest just to fail.

A number of people have suggested freezing their levy payments in protest by paying into a Trust Account. Depending on who you talk to you, some say it can be done and others say it can’t.

Answer: You definitely can’t pay into a trust account.

You definitely can’t pay into a trust account. The Act is very clear – levies have to be paid as issued to the body corporate.

And with respect to the selection of the committee, the resident manager has not picked them. The owners have. The people on the outside at the moment are entitled to stand for committee as much as anyone. If they do not get voted in then the owners as a group have spoken – be they guided by the resident manager or otherwise.

The committee are required to act reasonably but they aren’t required to action every request or do what people not in committee ask them to.

Have a question about management rights or freezing levy payments in QLD or something to add to the article? Leave a comment below.

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This post appears in Strata News #307.

Frank Higginson
E: [email protected]
P: 07 3193 0500
W: Hynes Legal

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About Frank Higginson, Hynes Legal

Frank Higginson heads the community titles practice at Hynes Legal.

Frank commenced five years articles of clerkship on the Gold Coast while studying law externally in January 1992 and apart from a two-year hiatus working in London with a multinational firm from 1997 to 1999 he has practiced in Queensland in property matters for his entire career.

Frank joined Hynes Legal in 2001. He became a partner/director in 2004 and since then has whittled his practice down to the two keys areas for strata law in Queensland - body corporate law and management rights.

He and his team are the only experts in Queensland that truly specialise in both of these areas of law.

The rationale for this is the belief that when there are issues in dispute, it helps enormously (from a legal, strategic and commercial position) to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and views of the other party. It creates the opportunity to make commercially sensible suggestions to enable the resolution of all issues in dispute. Acting for only one side of an industry (particularly if vociferously so) prevents that.

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Comments

James says

February 8, 2022 at 9:22 pm

Could the Committee or Body Corp freeze the remuneration pay to the Caretaker? But per caretaker agreement, it mentioned Body Corp must pay remuneration to the caretaker in 14 days. What could caretaker do if Body Corp freeze the pay which breach the caretaker agreement. As per agreement, caretaker could choose terminate the caretaker agreement but who will take all the resulted business loss costs? Thank you.

Reply
- Nikki Jovicic says
  
  February 10, 2022 at 6:17 am
  
  Hi James
  
  This recent Q&A should assist: Question: If our caretaker does not perform their duties to committee satisfaction, can there be a monetary fine for not completing satisfactory work?
  
  Reply
Susan says

December 6, 2019 at 7:26 am

Hi our complex has a disgruntled nuisance owner that was removed as secretary approx 7 months ago ,as retaliation they has unreasonably challenged many of the committee’s decisions, they continously write to owners with misguided and incorrect decision, they have not returned body corporate emails and passwords purposely created for the committee and any future committees.

This has resulted in 2 submissions to the commusissioners office, a letter for inappropriate conduct issued by lawyer directly and a breach notice.
Their continuous disgruntled behaviour has now cost the owners of this complex approx $8,000.in extra costs. The disgruntled owner has vowed that they do not care what costs they continue to incur in the future to all owners and will continue with this vexatious behaviour.

Is there any other way to stop this owners behaviour, the committee are always working in accordance with the legislation and a lot of the owners are exhausted by all the correspondence and costs by the nuisance owner and the committees attempts in trying to correct misinformation and replying to commissioners submissions being sent.
HELP

Reply