Committee Spending Limits in Queensland: What Your Committee Can Approve

The default: $200 per lot

The body corporate can set the committee spending limit to any figure by ordinary resolution at a general meeting. If no figure has ever been set, the default is $200 multiplied by the number of lots: $1,200 in a 6-lot scheme, $2,400 in a 12-lot scheme, $6,000 at 30 lots, $20,000 at 100.

GST counts. A $2,300-plus-GST maintenance quote is a $2,530 spend — over the default limit in a 12-lot scheme, and therefore a general meeting decision, not a committee one.

Schemes under the Commercial Module have committees without a spending limit; Specified Two-Lot Schemes don't require a committee at all. Everything here concerns the Standard and Accommodation Module schemes that make up most of Queensland strata.

What the limit is — and isn't

The limit applies per proposal, and the same anti-avoidance principle that applies to major spending applies here: a committee cannot slice one project into pieces to keep each piece under its limit. If replacing the building's guttering is one project, its whole cost is measured against the limit — the invoicing schedule doesn't change that.

The committee also can't spend what isn't there: approvals must sit within the budget the owners adopted. And some decisions are reserved to general meetings regardless of cost — a spending limit is not a general licence.

There are pressure valves. A committee can exceed its limit where spending is required to comply with a statutory order or notice, an adjudicator's order, or a court judgment — the law doesn't force a scheme to convene a general meeting before complying with one.

Where the two-quote rule joins in

The committee spending limit and the major spending limit (default: the lesser of $1,100 × lots or $10,000) are different figures answering different questions — who can approve this versus how many quotes must be considered. They interact in one important way:

A body corporate can deliberately set its committee spending limit higher than the major spending limit — a common efficiency move in larger schemes, letting the committee handle mid-size works without calling a general meeting. But it comes with a condition: for any proposal above the major spending limit, the committee itself must obtain and consider at least two quotations before deciding. Raise the committee's authority and you raise its quoting obligations with it.

The record is the protection

Committee decisions are the ones most likely to be questioned later, because they happen between general meetings, out of most owners' sight. When a decision is challenged — by an owner, at an AGM, or before an adjudicator — the questions are always the same: was it within the limit, was it within budget, were the required quotes obtained, and where are they now? Committees that can answer from a complete record are untouchable. Committees that answer from memory and a forwarded email thread are not.