"No pets allowed" by-laws are invalid
Section 169B of the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 is blunt: a by-law must not prohibit animals, and must not restrict the number, type or size of an animal a person may keep. A blanket "no pets" by-law — or a "nothing over 10kg" by-law — is invalid.
But here is the trap that catches everyone: even though the by-law is invalid, the committee cannot approve your pet while it remains registered. The body corporate is required to enforce its registered by-laws, invalid or not. So a scheme with a prohibitive animal by-law is stuck in a loop — the committee can't say yes until the by-law is changed, and changing a by-law is a restricted issue requiring a special resolution at a general meeting.
If you're in that position, the path is: propose the motion to change the by-law (as an owner, submit it for the next general meeting; owners of at least 25% of lots can also requisition an extraordinary general meeting), and if the change fails, the validity of the by-law itself can be disputed through the Commissioner's office.
The normal path: permissive by-laws and the written request
Most schemes have a permissive by-law — animals allowed with the body corporate's approval, possibly subject to conditions. The process:
- Check the by-laws first. They're in the community management statement, available from Titles Queensland. If the CMS has no animal by-law at all, you don't need approval — though notifying the body corporate anyway avoids arguments later.
- Submit a written request to the secretary (or the chairperson in their absence, or a body corporate manager exercising the secretary's powers). BCCM Form 31 exists for exactly this, and including detail — a photo, council registration, vaccination status — removes the body corporate's ability to say it didn't have enough information.
- The committee has 21 days to decide. Most animal requests are committee decisions, unless the scheme has previously made animal approvals a reserved issue for general meetings.
The 21-day rule: silence means yes
If the committee does not decide the request within 21 days, the animal is deemed approved. Two details make this rule sharper than it looks:
- A request for more information does not pause the clock. The 21 days run from when the request was made, regardless of any back-and-forth afterwards.
- A deemed approval carries no conditions. The body corporate loses the chance to attach any — which is precisely why committees should decide requests promptly rather than let them lapse into unconditional approval.
Where animal approvals are a reserved issue, the deemed-approval mechanics shift: the animal is taken to be approved if a general meeting isn't called within 21 days of the request, or if the body corporate doesn't decide within 6 weeks after the meeting notice goes out.
One caution before acting on a deemed approval: confirm which track your request was actually on. An occupier who assumes a committee-level deemed approval — when the scheme had quietly made pets a general-meeting issue — can end up with the animal on site before the meeting that was lawfully called to decide it. Ask in writing which process applies and when your request was received. The dates decide everything here, and the party with the paper trail wins.
When can the body corporate refuse?
Section 169B closes the list. A request can only be refused where:
- keeping the animal poses an unacceptable risk to health and safety that reasonable conditions can't manage (or the owner won't comply with conditions that would)
- keeping the animal would contravene another law — a council limit on animal numbers or breeds, for instance
- the animal is a regulated dog under the Animal Management (Cats and Dogs) Act 2008
- the animal would unreasonably interfere with another occupier's use and enjoyment, or with native wildlife on the scheme land, and conditions can't manage the interference
- the applicant refuses reasonable conditions.
"We've always been a no-pet building" is not on the list. Refusing simply because a prohibitive by-law exists is expressly unreasonable. If you believe a refusal has no valid basis, dispute resolution through the Commissioner's office is the avenue — after a genuine attempt at self-resolution, which your written request and follow-ups already evidence.
Assistance animals sit outside all of this: a person with a disability under the Guide, Hearing and Assistance Dogs Act 2009 does not need approval to bring their dog onto scheme land.
Conditions, and how approval can be lost
Approvals can carry reasonable conditions — leads or carriers on common property, prompt waste disposal, flea treatment. What's reasonable depends on the animal and the scheme; a condition requiring every pet to be carried across common property regardless of circumstances is the standard example of overreach.
Approval isn't permanent immunity. The legislation prohibits using a lot in a way that causes a nuisance, and adjudicators have ordered animals removed where owners didn't control behaviour that was genuinely interfering with others. Breaching approval conditions can also see approval withdrawn.
Why the record decides pet disputes
Notice the pattern in every branch above: the request date starts a statutory clock; decisions must be notified in writing; committee and general meeting decisions must reach the minutes and go to owners within 21 days; deemed approvals must be confirmed in the minutes of the next meeting. Pet disputes are won and lost on documents and dates — who requested what, when, and what was decided.
That's true of everything a committee touches, and it's the principle StrataTrade is built around for the body corporate's bigger decisions: jobs scoped in writing, quotes returned in comparable form, decisions and reasoning recorded permanently against the building. A scheme that runs its spending that way tends to run its approvals that way too — and it's the schemes that can produce the paper that stay out of the Commissioner's office.
This article is general information about Queensland body corporate law, not legal advice. By-laws vary between schemes and timeframes differ under some regulation modules — confirm your scheme's by-laws and module, and seek advice for contested matters.