Question: What can owners do if a body corporate breaches by-laws, excludes owners from meetings, and uses unlicensed people for works and finances?
Our body corporate has repeated governance issues. By-laws and regulations have been breached, and some owners have been locked out of online meetings.
A committee member has organised or carried out works such as water ingress repairs and tennis court repairs, even though these jobs require licensed contractors. Owners face a significant increase in levies, which we believe results from poor financial management over the past year.
What practical options do owners have to address these issues? What enforcement or consequences apply if the body corporate continues to act improperly?
Answer: Someone has to put their hands up to do the job.
You can really attack this two ways. The first is to go and seek orders preventing things from being done the way they are, which will mean you need to be able to prove (in effect) breaches of the Act somewhere.
The alternative – and quicker – approach would be to rally owners to change the committee and import better governance. That would mean you need to replace the current members with new conscripts.
It is one of the issues with strata. Someone has to put their hands up to do the job, and if it’s not you, you can potentially be stuck with people not doing it the way you would like it done.
This post appears in the May 2026 edition of The QLD Strata Magazine.
Frank Higginson
Redchip Strata Law
E: FrankH@redchip.com.au
P: 07 3193 0500
I am living in the complex mentioned here, I don’t know the date of this question but it has all escalated since. We have all put our hands up. Motions have been put forward to relieve these people from their position and not put to a vote until 6-8 months later and failed. We have a rogue body corporate. We have 7 members but they only use 4. Unfortunately the government adopts the opinion owners abuse the body corporate but we have the body corporate abusing us. Regulations, by-laws or any rules that have been sent through are ignored. The body corporate would be covered by insurance should legal action be taken to sue. Owners do not it comes out of their pockets. At the moment that is what the body corporate is doing “special levies” we have a body corporate that is making owners pay up front large amounts of money for work that has become worse due to their ignoring the problems over the last 2 and a half years. The work being carried out by unqualified persons is still not repaired, we are being patched up at great expense.