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Strata board promotes idea of national licensing

Strata Community Australia (Qld) has put forward a recommendation that it strongly supports the licensing of strata managers and provided comments on the Property Occupations Decision Regulation Impact Statement.

SCA (Qld) president, Simon Barnard has pushed for the move in order to create a regulation and minimum education requirement in order to mitigate the financial mismanagement and to protect the strata sector. There are about 25% of households or 1 million Queenslanders that live in small to medium density housing, which are predominately strata titled. Mr Barnard said the submission includes details showing the quite high proportion of Australians that are impacted by the strata management industry, the amount of money that is controlled by strata managers in the sector and the fact that, from a consumer protection perspective, there is no licensing of strata managers in most jurisdictions in Australia.

SCA Qld, believes a licensing scheme will increase accountability in the body corporate sector, however is wary of an increase in ‘red tape’, which could make body corporate manager’s role unnecessarily complicated. “We would like to see the industry take ownership of a licensing scheme through self-regulation of professional standards, accreditation and continuing education.

“We believe SCA (Qld) is in an ideal position as an industry-leading body to support a licensing scheme in Queensland with education and training. We have been the peak industry body for almost 30 years and our members currently make up a majority of the Queensland strata industry,” Mr Barnard said.

The organisation said that body corporate managers play an incredibly important role in strata communities, and emphasised the importance that they meet certain requirements.

“If SCA (Qld) was given the green light to roll out a registration scheme, body corporate managers and their staff will need to meet our membership requirements, including holding a Certificate IV in Property Services (Operations); having professional indemnity insurance; and comply with the legislation code of conduct and the SCA (Qld) code of conduct which they sign upon joining along with national responsibilities.

“These three requirements are in place to protect both bodies corporate and residents be they an owner or tenant. Licensing of strata manager across all the states and territories will provide a reliable register of strata managing agents across the country, the number of which is largely unknown because of the current lack of any form of licensing in the majority of the states,” Mr Barnard said.

The combined total of funds held over 277,000 bodies corporate funds in an average daily balance exceeds $4 billion, with Queensland’s share being over $1 billion (25% of the bodies corporate national totals).

“Even a small boutique strata management firm may hold millions of dollars on behalf of the bodies corporate that it manages at any one time and it is ludicrous to think that the strata managers are not registered or licensed in dealing with this amount of money,” Mr Barnard said.

SCA (Qld) have said that the benefits of regulation and licensing will outweigh or neutralise the costing associated with non-regulation of the strata industry in Queensland.

“The cost of licensing does not need to be a significant impost on either government or the strata manager and, indeed, SCA (Qld) submits that it should not be an impost on either.”

“The strata industry in Queensland with billions of dollars of assets under management and hundreds of millions of body corporate fees held in trust is the third biggest state in the industry in Australia – and not having a regulatory foundation is a major gap in the consumer protection framework in Queensland,” Mr Barnard said.

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