The Rules and Regulations for Your Body Corporate

In Queensland, bodies corporate are regulated through a hierarchy of statutory laws and regulations.

• Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (BCCMA)
• Regulation modules made under the BCCMA (standard module, accommodation module, commercial module, small schemes module)
• Body corporate by-laws contained in the community management statement (CMS)

Monitoring the operation of these laws and regulations are the Courts, and the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management, which is a government department in the portfolio of the Department of Justice and Attorney General.

The structure of the legislation is that the empowering provisions, and any rules applicable to all bodies corporate, are contained in the Body Corporate and Community Management Act. However, much of the detail is in the regulation module.

Each body corporate has an applicable regulation module, denoted in the community management statement. Currently there are four different regulation modules. Each contains rules designed to best administer particular types of property. For instance, the small schemes module is designed for community titles schemes of six lots or fewer. The accommodation module is designed for community titles schemes where lots are predominantly used for letting.   The commercial module is designed for community titles schemes that are occupied by non-residential tenancies (i.e. wholesalers, retailers, offices or manufacturers).  The standard module is for schemes not regulated by other modules (i.e. it is the general-purpose module).