Body Corporate vs Unit Owner Electrical Responsibilities in QLD: Who Pays for What

Byron Knight, Licensed Electrical Contractor

QLD Lic. 1511406 · 20+ years’ experience · Gold Coast & SEQ · Updated September 2026

It’s one of the most common calls we get on strata and body corporate properties: something’s stopped working, and before anyone talks about scheduling the repair, the first question is who’s actually paying for it. The owner assumes the body corporate, because it’s part of the building. The committee assumes the owner, because it’s inside their unit. Both can be wrong, and the answer genuinely isn’t obvious even to people who’ve lived in the scheme for years.

This guide sets out how Queensland law splits electrical responsibility, where the boundary actually sits, and the specific exceptions that trip up experienced committees.

The legal starting point

Queensland doesn’t use “strata title” the way other states do. The correct term is a community titles scheme, governed by the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 and, for most residential schemes, the Standard Module Regulation. Other modules exist — Accommodation (common in Gold Coast schemes with a letting agent or short-stay presence), Commercial, Small Schemes and Specified Two-Lot — with broadly similar but not identical provisions. Your scheme’s by-laws and community management statement always take precedence where they say something different.

The core test sits in section 20 of the Act, and it’s worth reading closely because the wording does all the work. Common property includes all utility infrastructure on scheme land, other than infrastructure that is:

1. Solely related to supplying utility services to a lot — it serves one unit only.
2. Within the boundaries of that lot, as the boundaries are defined in the plan of subdivision.
3. Located other than within a boundary structure for the lot.

All three have to be true before responsibility shifts to the owner. Miss any one and it’s common property.

The default split

The pattern: shared infrastructure and common areas sit with the body corporate. Anything wired inside your walls serving only your unit sits with you — even where part of it is physically outside your four walls.

The exception that causes most disputes

Queensland Government guidance on utility infrastructure maintenance puts it directly: despite the other rules, a lot owner is responsible for maintaining utility infrastructure they install for the lot’s benefit. The worked example given is an air conditioning unit and its associated piping installed on common property for the owner’s use — the owner’s responsibility, unless the body corporate has agreed otherwise.

That last clause matters and is routinely left out when this rule gets repeated. It is the default, not an absolute. If your scheme has a recorded agreement covering the equipment, the default doesn’t apply.

The practical test for electrical equipment is who the equipment serves and who installed it — not where it physically sits. That surprises owners who assume anything outside their unit is someone else’s problem.

Exclusive use areas — and a limit people miss

Many schemes grant an owner exclusive use of part of common property — a courtyard, a carport, a balcony — through an exclusive use by-law. Where that applies, maintenance of the area, including fittings serving it, commonly shifts to the benefiting owner, depending on the by-law’s own terms.

Worked examples

Is a body corporate a “PCBU”? A common misconception

Committees often assume that because they’re responsible for common property, the body corporate carries the same workplace safety duties as a business under Queensland’s WHS Act. That’s usually not correct.

Engaging a contractor — including an electrician — to carry out repairs does not by itself make a body corporate a person conducting a business or undertaking. Where a body corporate is responsible only for residential common areas and directly employs nobody, the WHS Act generally doesn’t apply, and committee members don’t carry officer duties under it. The position changes if the body corporate directly employs a worker, or where common areas are used for commercial purposes.

None of that reduces the body corporate’s separate obligations under the BCCM Act to maintain common property in good condition, or the testing obligations attached to emergency and exit lighting. It just means the PCBU framework that applies to a shop or office fit-out doesn’t automatically apply to a residential scheme engaging tradespeople as needed. Where a scheme does have commercial tenancies, how electrical emergencies are handled changes with it.

Who pays the bill vs who pays for the repair

Two separate questions, and conflating them causes unnecessary arguments. Where units are individually metered, each owner is billed directly by their retailer for their own usage — that’s a metering and billing arrangement, not a maintenance responsibility. Where a shared service isn’t individually metered, the body corporate typically pays the account and recovers it through levies against contribution schedule lot entitlements.

An owner paying their own electricity bill doesn’t make them responsible for maintaining the wiring. A body corporate covering common area power doesn’t make it responsible for every fault behind an owner’s front door.

When it’s genuinely unclear

1. Check the community management statement and by-laws first. They can vary the default position, particularly around exclusive use.
2. Get a licensed electrician to identify exactly where the fault sits — inside the lot boundary, within a boundary structure, or in common property. This single fact resolves most disputes on its own.
3. Raise it with the committee or body corporate manager if the finding doesn’t settle it. Most remaining disputes turn on by-law interpretation, not the facts.
4. Escalate through the formal pathway if it stays unresolved. The Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management can appoint an adjudicator, with appeal rights to QCAT.

In our experience most “who pays” disputes end at step two. Once someone licensed has actually inspected the fault and can say plainly which side of the boundary it’s on, committees and owners generally accept it.

Practical advice for committees and property managers

• Get the boundary documented, not assumed. When an electrician attends a job near the boundary, ask them to note in writing exactly where the fault was and which side it sat on. That becomes useful evidence next time.
• Put common property electrical on a schedule. Regular testing of the main switchboard, common area lighting and emergency lighting catches faults before they become arguments about who pays for an after-hours attendance — that’s what a preventative maintenance programme is for.
• Use one contractor who understands the boundaries. An electrician unfamiliar with the BCCM framework can misattribute a fault and create a dispute that didn’t need to exist.
• Review exclusive use by-laws for electrical clarity when they’re drafted or amended, keeping section 177’s limit in mind.
• Keep the community management statement accessible to owners. Most disputes start because nobody has read the current by-laws.

Gold Coast schemes, specifically

The pattern differs by building type here. The high-rise belt through Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach and Main Beach is mostly Building Format Plan, where risers, basement supply and common area lighting dominate the body corporate’s electrical load and the lot boundary is usually clean. Walk-up blocks and townhouse complexes through Labrador, Mermaid Beach and Burleigh Waters are where the genuinely contested ones come from — courtyards under exclusive use, condensers on shared walls, and meter positions that nobody documented when the scheme was established.

Coastal schemes have a third factor: salt air reaches common property boards in basements and risers, and a corroding main switchboard is unambiguously the body corporate’s to deal with.