Following the commencement of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) the secretary of an owners corporation must keep a consolidated up to date copy of the by-laws for the strata scheme. (You can read more about the new Act here)
One large change is that since 30 November 2016 the LPI has issued a new form to register a change to the by-laws. The form requires a consolidated list of by-laws, including the new change of by-law, to be included as an annexure. This means that owners corporation will have to complete a by-law consolidation process before it can register any new change of by-laws.
This change also means that once the consolidated version of the by-laws has been registered all current change of by-laws notifications on the certificate of title for the common property will be removed and the folio will be updated to refer to the consolidated version of the by-laws. Accordingly, it is important that the consolidated list is complete and accurate. Owners corporations should be aware that the by-laws in force for a scheme will depend on the date the strata plan was registered.
A further change is that all schemes in existence before 30 November 2016 must review the by-laws for their schemes before 30 November 2017. We recommend scheme’s conduct an in-depth review to ensure their by-laws do not breach the new restriction on by-laws bought in by the new Act and to update any by-laws to meet the scheme’s current needs.
This article was written by Kerin Benson from Kerin Benson Lawyers and first appeared in LookUpStrata.