Why does it take so long to convene a Strata meeting? One reason – POSTAGE !

Notwithstanding the required meeting notice period obligations placed on Owners Corporations (Body Corporates) set out in the Strata Schemes Management Act ;

• General Meetings – 7 clear days (clause 7, Schedule 1, SSMA 2015)
• Committee Meetings – 3 clear days (clause 5, Schedule 2, SSMA 2015)
• First Annual General Meeting – 14 clear days (section 14(3), SSMA 2015)

There is also a further obligation placed on Owners Corporations to ensure that a certain time period be allowed to compensate for notices being posted through Australia Post.

As recently as 28^th November 2018, amendments to the Interpretations Act (section 76(1)(b)) saw the ‘postage’ time period extended from 4 business days to 7 business days. The ‘postage’ period must be calculated before applying the meeting notice period mentioned above.

Clearly this dramatically impacts on the efficiency of decision making in Strata Schemes and will no doubt have people jumping up and down when proceedings are delayed for this reason.

Solution: Encourage Owners within your scheme to elect to receive their notifications by email otherwise, unfortunately, these notice periods MUST apply in order to deem the meeting and any decisions at that meeting ‘valid’.