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By-laws are a set of duties, obligations, procedural matters and behavioural rules for owners, occupiers and visitors of a strata property. All strata complexes have by-laws – some of which will be default by-laws (as seen in the Strata Titles Act), others may have been amended or added over time.

Whenever a Strata Company by-law is added, amended, or repealed, the current copy of the by-laws that are lodged must be consolidated to place them in one document. What often happens with strata plans and by-laws is that they get messy and are produced across lots of documents.

Consolidation is the process of reviewing the existing documents and consolidating it into one set of bylaws. The review process includes:

  1. Reviewing existing by-laws individually and determine if they are governance or conduct by-laws.
  2. Checking to ensure that existing by-laws are valid – are they prohibitive, restrictive, oppressive, discriminatory, prejudicial in accordance with S46.
  3. Testing the by-laws against the objectives of S119 of the Act (Objectives of the Strata Company)

ESM advise that Strata Companies engage the services of a legal practitioner to carry out this requirement as the requirement to test by-laws for validity, and against the objectives of the Strata Company in accordance with Section 119 is likely to require reference to several different legislations and case law.

A number of things have changed since the Amendments to the Strata Titles Act were proclaimed including:

  • A resolution does not need to be passed in order to consolidate by-laws, however it has been recommended that as the by-law changes will need to be put to a meeting, in any case, those consolidated by-laws are approved at a general meeting by ordinary resolution.
  • Strata companies are now required to register a consolidated set of by-laws as soon as they have been amended. Landgate has drafted the following attached forms to assist with registering by-law amendments & consolidations.

For more information about consolidating by-laws you can talk to your Strata Manager.

Further reading from Landgate can be located here: Landgate_Guide_to_Consolidating_By-Laws.pdf