When Is Immediate Change to the Common Property Necessary?

WHEN CAN A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE BE MADE TO THE COMMON PROPERTY WITHOUT OWNERS' APPROVAL?

The Court of Appeal has clearly stated that if there are reasonable grounds to believe that safety or security requires a significant change to the use or appearance of the common property, Council can authorize that change without the Owners' consent (Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503, 2003 BCCA 126, para. 21). Council can act without Owners' authorization only in that situation.

We have written about the general rule that a significant change otherwise requires the Owners' authorization in another article, and this is the one exception to that rule: not a second route around the Owners, but a narrow safety valve for a genuine emergency.

The exception is claimed far more often than it succeeds. Knowing its real shape, and its real limits, protects Council from relying on it when a proposed change was merely convenient to make quickly, rather than genuinely necessary.

WHAT MUST COUNCIL BELIEVE BEFORE AUTHORIZING A CHANGE TO COMMON PROPERTY?

At the time it acts, Council must believe three things at once, drawn directly from the statute:

• There were reasonable grounds to believe the change was necessary.

• The necessity was immediate, not merely advisable or convenient.

• The purpose was to ensure safety or to prevent significant loss or damage, not some other benefit.

Anthony v. Schnapp, 2016 BCSC 1839, shows the exception working. An owner dug a drainage trench, installed a sump, and poured a concrete patio on common property without consent, and the court found reasonable grounds to believe the work was necessary to prevent significant loss or damage, applying the exception even though the strata's own bylaw had no equivalent safety carve-out (Anthony, paras. 43-45).

DOES THE EMERGENCY EXCEPTION APPLY WHEN THERE IS NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE TO THE COMMON PROPERTY?

The emergency and safety exception only applies when Council is considering whether section 71 of the Act applies. Council cannot rely on this exception for any other purpose. Once a court or the tribunal has already found that s.71 does not apply to the change at all, no reliance may be placed on the exception as an independent basis (Frank v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 355, 2017 BCCA 92, paras. 29-30). In Frank, a chambers judge's passing reference to the safety exception did not undermine her decision, because the strata's duty to repair the property already supplied a complete, independent basis for the result. The safety exception was beside the point once that duty did the necessary work.

The law is about line drawing, and this is one more line worth holding onto: the safety exception answers whether a significant change can go ahead without Owners' authorization, not whether some other obligation, like the duty to repair, applies instead. Anthony v. Schnapp, 2016 BCSC 1839, shows the same reasoning can still usefully inform a different question outside section 71 itself. The same "reasonable grounds to believe... necessary to ensure safety or prevent significant loss or damage" language, though it has no equivalent in the strata's own bylaw dealing with owner alterations, was borrowed as a helpful guide for whether the strata should reasonably consent to an owner's own request to do work on the common property (Anthony, para. 43).

HOW OFTEN DOES A CLAIMED EMERGENCY SUCCEED?

A claimed emergency succeeds far less often than it is argued. In our review of the tribunal's own decisions on significant change, the Civil Resolution Tribunal keeps returning to one distinction to separate a genuine emergency from a change dressed up as one: the necessity of repairing or removing something does not, by itself, license the necessity of reconfiguring or replacing it in a materially different way. A strata facing a rotted or damaged common-property feature can usually act to fix or remove it right away, but the moment the response goes further, changing the feature's configuration, size, or function, the tribunal treats that additional step as needing its own justification.

WHAT POINTS A CLAIMED EMERGENCY TOWARD SUCCESS, AND WHAT POINTS IT TOWARD FAILURE?

A present, evidenced hazard, addressed by doing no more than the hazard required, tends to succeed. A deteriorated, rusting awning was found to justify immediate removal, the tribunal reasoning that requiring Owners' authorization first could have left the strata unable to meet its own repair obligations at all (Progressive Technologies Inc. v. The Owners, Strata Plan VAS 2828, 2019 BCCRT 715). Active water ingress justified replacing a flowerbed with a gravel bed on the same footprint, where a contractor had specifically warned that restoring the original flowerbed would cause further water damage (Paquette v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS988, 2022 BCCRT 534).

Necessity also has a shelf life tied to the emergency itself, not to how long the strata finds it convenient to maintain the change. A pool, hot tub, and sauna closure at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was justified for as long as the public health emergency genuinely continued, but the tribunal found the strata was no longer justified in keeping the facilities closed six months later, once the safety concerns were no longer immediate (Brogan v. The Owners, Strata Plan 845, 2020 BCCRT 1196).

Three recurring reasons point the other way. A strata cannot use the necessity of a repair to justify a different, unrelated change: rotted common-property stairs genuinely needed repair, but reconfiguring their layout, rather than fixing what was there, required its own authorization regardless of the repair need (Wong v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 804, 2019 BCCRT 1285). The exception is judged on the evidence available at the time the change was made, not with the benefit of hindsight: a patio cover bolted into common-property concrete was not excused where nothing in the record showed it was needed for safety when it was installed, later complaints notwithstanding (Cusano v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS4924, 2026 BCCRT 363). And where there was no imminent risk at all, the exception does not arise: a mature cedar tree that was stable and not at risk of falling could not be removed under the safety exception, whatever other reasons the strata may have had for wanting it gone (Fong v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 415, 2024 BCCRT 1239).

WHEN SHOULD COUNCIL STOP RELYING ON "IT WAS AN EMERGENCY" AND REQUIRE OWNERS' AUTHORIZATION INSTEAD?

Council should ask whether what was done matches what the emergency required, and for how long the emergency lasted. If the response went beyond fixing or removing the hazard, whether by reconfiguring, upgrading, or replacing the feature rather than restoring it, that additional step needs its own authorization. If the underlying risk has passed but the change is still in place because reversing it would be inconvenient, the exception has already run out.

Our recommendation is that Council document the hazard, and the evidence for it, at the time it acts, since the tribunal judges necessity on what was known then, not on what later events go on to confirm or contradict. There is a presumption in law that if people understand the law, they will act consistent with what it requires, and Council cannot document a hazard correctly if it does not first understand how narrowly this exception is read.

Getting this wrong carries the same consequences as any other unauthorized significant change: the change can be ordered restored at the strata's or the responsible Owner's expense, and the Owners can still end up being asked for authorization after the fact, only later and after the dispute has already cost more than seeking it up front would have.

THE SAFETY EXCEPTION EXCUSES ONLY WHAT THE EMERGENCY REQUIRED

The safety exception is real, but it is narrow: it excuses Council from needing Owners' authorization only for as long as, and only to the extent that, a genuine, evidenced hazard required immediate action. It does not survive once the underlying risk has passed, it does not stretch to cover a reconfiguration or upgrade riding along with a genuine repair, and it does not operate at all once a court or the tribunal has already found there was no significant change to begin with.

The key purpose of the law is for social ordering, and that purpose is served here by keeping the exception narrow: an emergency that justified acting without authorization once should not become a standing excuse to act without it again. A robust and resilient Strata Community treats "it was necessary at the time" as a claim that has to be shown, not merely asserted.