Does the Strata Have Its Electrical Planning Report? What a BC Condo Buyer Should Check

Every strata corporation in British Columbia of any real size now has to obtain an electrical planning report. For most of the Lower Mainland and the Capital Region the deadline is December 31, 2026. If you are buying a condo or townhouse, this is a document you can ask for by name, and the answer tells you something about the building that no listing will.

What the report actually is

Section 94.1 of the Strata Property Act is three subsections long and says almost nothing on its own. It reads: “Subject to the regulations, a strata corporation must obtain from a qualified person, on or before the dates determined in accordance with the regulations, an electrical planning report.” Everything that matters — the dates, the exemptions, who may write it, what goes in it — is in the Strata Property Regulation, Part 5.2.

It is not a safety inspection and it is not a design drawing. The Province is blunt that an electrical planning report “is not a detailed analysis”. It is a capacity snapshot: here is the service, here is what is drawing on it, here is the headroom, and here is what you could do to make more.

It also is not the same thing as a depreciation report, and it is not an EV Ready Plan. Those are three separate documents with three separate rules, and the strata office may not distinguish between them carefully when you ask.

Who has to get one, and by when

The regulation splits stratas by when they were created and where the land is. A strata established on or before December 31, 2023 is an “existing strata corporation”; one established after that date is a “new strata corporation”. The three regional districts are called a “specified area”.

Which strata	Deadline	Provision
Existing strata, land wholly or partly in the Capital, Fraser Valley or Metro Vancouver regional district	December 31, 2026	Reg. s. 5.8(2)(a)
Existing strata, land wholly outside those three districts	December 31, 2028	Reg. s. 5.8(2)(b)
New strata (established after December 31, 2023), non-phased	5 years after the strata plan was deposited	Reg. s. 5.8(4)
Phased strata, if the phases deposited by December 31, 2023 include at least one phase with 5 or more lots	December 31, 2026 or December 31, 2028, on the same geographic test	Reg. s. 5.9(2)(a)
Phased strata, each later phase of 5 or more lots	5 years after that phase was deposited — the duty recurs	Reg. s. 5.9(2)(b), (3)
Phased strata where every phase has fewer than 5 lots	May defer until 5 years after the final phase is deposited	Reg. s. 5.9(4)

Two details in that table are worth slowing down for, because they are commonly got wrong.

“Wholly or partly” pulls you in; only “wholly outside” keeps you out. A strata plan whose land straddles a regional district boundary is on the 2026 deadline, not the 2028 one. The test is where the land in the strata plan is, not where the mailing address is.

A phased strata’s test is per phase, not on the total. A phased development of ten phases of four lots each — forty homes — has no phase of 5 or more lots, so under section 5.9(4) it may defer until five years after the final phase is deposited. Note the verb: the regulation says the strata “may defer”, not that it need not obtain one. The report is postponed, not cancelled.

Who is exempt, and the date the exemption is frozen at

There are two exemptions and both turn on a lot count taken on one particular day.

Section 5.8(3): “An existing strata corporation need not obtain an electrical planning report if the strata plan has fewer than 5 strata lots on December 31, 2023.” Section 5.8(5) does the same for a new strata, measured “on the date of deposit”.

The test is not continuous. A four-lot strata plan on December 31, 2023 that has since grown is still outside section 5.8 as the regulation is written, because the regulation fixes the count at that date and never asks again. The Province’s own page summarises the rule as applying to “strata corporations with five or more strata lots” and drops the date entirely. For almost every building that shorthand gives the right answer. For a small strata near the line, it does not, and the date is the thing that decides it.

Who is allowed to write it — and the trap in mixed buildings

“Qualified person” is defined in regulation section 5.10, and the definition is scoped per strata plan, not per building. That one word does a lot of work.

The strata plan	Who may prepare the report
A strata plan “in which each building is a Part 9 building”	A professional engineer or professional licensee engineering (Engineers and Geoscientists BC); or an applied science technologist or certified technician (ASTTBC); or a journeyperson in the construction electrician or industrial electrician trade
“Any other strata corporation” — which includes any plan with even one larger building on it	Only the engineer or the applied science technologist routes. The electrician route is not available.

So a single larger building anywhere on the strata plan disqualifies the electrician route for the whole plan, including for the smaller buildings sitting next to it. A mixed townhouse-and-apartment development is the obvious case. The Province’s guidance material says a journeyperson “may complete an EPR for Part 9 buildings only” and does not address the mixed case at all, which means a strata could in good faith commission a report from someone the regulation does not accept for its plan.

If you are buying in a complex with buildings of different sizes, the report’s own first page answers this. Regulation section 5.11(2)(b) requires the report to name the preparer and describe “the person’s qualifications”, the “error and omission insurance, if any, carried by the person”, and “the relationship between the person and the strata corporation”. Read those three lines.

What has to be in it

Regulation section 5.11(2) lists what the report must contain. This is the part a buyer can use, because it tells you what questions the document is obliged to answer.

Required content	Why it matters to a buyer
The date of the report	Capacity is a snapshot. A report from early in the cycle may predate chargers and heat pumps installed since.
The preparer’s name, qualifications, errors and omissions insurance, and relationship to the strata	Tells you whether the right category of professional wrote it, and whether anyone stands behind it.
“the current capacity of the strata corporation’s electrical system”	The size of the service.
A list of existing demands, including EV charging infrastructure and heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting	What is already claimed.
“the current peak demand on and spare capacity of the electrical system”	The single most useful number in the document. This is the headroom.
An estimate of the capacity needed to electrify systems currently running on another energy source	What converting the gas heating would take.
An estimate of capacity needed for anticipated future demands, including heat pumps and future EV charging	Whether the building has a plan or is hoping.
Steps the strata “could practicably take to reduce the demands”	Load management options short of a service upgrade.
Upgrades or modifications it “could practicably undertake to increase the capacity”	The expensive option — and a hint at a future special levy.
An estimate of the capacity those steps or upgrades would free up	Whether any of it is worth doing.

There is a much shorter version for one narrow case. Under section 5.11(3), if “each strata lot in the strata plan is supplied with electricity by a utility independently from each other strata lot”, the report needs only the date, the preparer details, and a statement that this is the case. Nothing about capacity at all. The Province says this is the rare exception rather than the rule and gives directly connected homes in some bare land stratas as the example. The legislation itself never uses the words “short form” — that is shorthand, not a legal term. If the report you are handed is one page long, this is probably why, and it is not evidence that anyone cut corners.

How a buyer actually gets it

This is the part that makes the whole thing practical, and it is the part no one writes about.

When the rules came in on December 6, 2023, the Form B Information Certificate — the standard document every strata buyer orders — gained a new paragraph (p). It asks, in these words: “Has the strata corporation obtained any electrical planning reports under section 94.1 of the Strata Property Act?” The answer box reads “no yes” and then, in brackets, the instruction: “attach copy of all electrical planning reports”.

Note the plural, and note “all”. Now compare the depreciation report. That one sits in the Act itself, at section 59(4)(d), and the Act requires only “the most recent depreciation report, if any”. Electrical planning reports appear nowhere in section 59(4). The duty to attach every one of them lives entirely in the bracketed instruction inside the prescribed form, hung off the catch-all in section 59(3)(m), “any other information required by the regulations”.

The practical effect: Form B must bring you every electrical planning report the strata has ever obtained, but only the latest depreciation report.

	Buyer, through Form B	Owner, through the records request
Provision	Act s. 59	Act s. 36
Who may ask	An owner, a purchaser, or someone authorised by either	An owner, or a tenant assigned the right, or someone authorised in writing
Time limit	“Within one week of a request”	Within 2 weeks
Maximum fee	$35, “including required attachments”, plus reproduction at up to 25 cents per page	25 cents per page — and no fee at all to inspect
Gets you the electrical planning report?	Yes — all of them, as attachments	Yes. It is a record under s. 35(2)(n.3)

Two things follow. If you already own in the building, you never need to buy a Form B to see the report — section 36 plus regulation section 4.2(2) gets you an inspection for nothing. And as a buyer, the $35 cap covers the certificate including its required attachments, however many reports have to be attached. The strata can pass on the copying at up to 25 cents a page, and that is all.

The report is also a permanent record. Regulation section 4.1(2) requires the strata to “permanently retain” the records listed in, among others, section 35(2)(n.3) of the Act — which is “any electrical planning reports obtained by the strata corporation under section 94.1”. It reaches the report by cross-reference rather than by name, but the effect is the same: unlike an engineer’s maintenance report, which may be kept only until the item is replaced, this one is kept forever.

What if the answer on Form B is “no”?

Before the deadline, “no” means nothing is wrong. After it, “no” means the strata has missed a statutory duty — and here the honest answer is more interesting than the one you would guess.

There is no fine. I read the whole Act looking for one. The only offence provision is section 290, and it is about knowingly making a false statement in a Certificate of Strata Corporation, which is a different document from Form B. More decisively, section 291(2) says: “Section 5 of the Offence Act does not apply to this Act or to the regulations.” That switches off the general rule that would otherwise make a breach of the Act an offence. Nothing in the regulation creates a penalty either. No one is going to fine the strata.

But that is not the same as no consequence. Section 94.1(2) is a duty under the Act, and two routes exist to enforce a duty:

• Act section 165 lets the Supreme Court, on the application of an owner, tenant, mortgagee or interested person, “order the strata corporation to perform a duty it is required to perform under this Act”.
• The Civil Resolution Tribunal Act gives the tribunal jurisdiction over a claim concerning “the interpretation or application of the Strata Property Act or a regulation” (s. 121(1)(a)) and lets it make “an order requiring a party to do something” (s. 123(1)(a)). Section 94.1 is not among the claims section 122 puts beyond its reach.

I want to be careful here: that is the statutory position on the face of the legislation. I could not find a decision in which anyone has actually used either route to force a strata to obtain an electrical planning report, and I could not search the tribunal’s decision database to be sure — it would not open for me. So treat this as untested rather than unavailable.

There is one more consequence, and it is the one that bites. Act section 59(5) provides that information disclosed in a Form B “is binding on the strata corporation in its dealings with a person who relied on the certificate and acted reasonably in doing so”. Paragraph (p) is section 59(3) information. So a strata that answers the electrical planning report question wrongly is bound by that answer in favour of a purchaser who reasonably relied on it. That, and not any offence provision, is where the risk of a careless Form B sits.

The part nobody mentions: your EV rights open on the deadline, report or no report

This is the most useful thing in the regulation and I have not seen it written anywhere for buyers.

Since December 6, 2023 an owner has had a statutory right to request that the strata approve alterations to common property needed to install EV charging infrastructure at a parking stall (Act s. 90.1), and the strata “must not unreasonably refuse” (s. 90.2(4)). But that right does not exist from day one. Regulation section 5.4 sets the date it opens, and it reads:

“(a) if the strata corporation is required to obtain an electrical planning report referred to in section 94.1 of the Act, the earlier of the following dates: (i) the date on which the strata corporation obtains an electrical planning report for the first time; (ii) the date on or before which the strata corporation is required to obtain an electrical planning report for the first time; (b) if the strata corporation need not obtain an electrical planning report referred to in section 94.1 of the Act, December 31, 2026.”

Read limb (a)(ii) again. The clock runs off the date the report was due, not the date it arrives. A strata that blows its deadline does not delay its owners’ EV request rights by a single day. The real sanction for missing the deadline is not a fine. It is that the strata ends up fielding owner requests about a system it has not measured.

And limb (b) produces a result worth knowing if you are buying in a small building or outside the Lower Mainland:

The strata	Must get a report?	Owners’ EV request rights open
5+ lots, in the Capital, Fraser Valley or Metro Vancouver regional district	Yes, by December 31, 2026	On the report, or December 31, 2026 — whichever is earlier
5+ lots, elsewhere in BC	Yes, by December 31, 2028	On the report, or December 31, 2028 — whichever is earlier
Fewer than 5 lots on December 31, 2023 — exempt	No	December 31, 2026, anywhere in the province
New strata of 5+ lots deposited after December 31, 2023	Yes, 5 years after deposit	On the report, or that date — which can be years away

So a small exempt strata in the Kootenays reaches the owner-request date on December 31, 2026, while a larger strata on the same street does not reach it until December 31, 2028. Being exempt from the report makes you subject to owners’ EV requests two years earlier. And in a brand-new building, owners may have no section 90.1 right for up to five years unless the strata gets its report sooner.

If you are buying because you want a charger or a heat pump

Then the report is not background reading, it is the deciding document. A few things to get straight before you write an offer.

The vote threshold has dropped, for EV work only. Act section 71 now requires only a majority vote for a significant change in the use or appearance of common property where the change “is related to the installation of EV charging infrastructure or the management of electricity used by EV charging infrastructure”. Anything else still needs a 3/4 vote. Note how wide that wording is — a vote on a load management system is also a majority vote.

But a special levy is still a 3/4 vote. Section 108 has no EV exception. The 2023 amendments lowered the bar for the section 71 change, and for spending from the contingency reserve fund on EV work and on the report itself (s. 96(b)(i)(A)(III) to (V), majority vote). They left the most common way of funding a large capital project — the special levy — at a 3/4 vote, or a unanimous vote if the levy is shared in some other way than the usual formula. A building that needs a service upgrade still has to clear the old hurdle to pay for it.

The strata has three months to decide on your request — and that number is in the regulation, not the Act. Section 90.2(6) says the strata must decide “within the prescribed period, if any”; regulation section 5.6 supplies the period: “3 months”.

Insufficient capacity is not a veto. This one is widely misdescribed. Section 90.2(3) says that in deciding whether to approve a request the strata “may consider” certain matters, and capacity is one of them: “the capacity of, and current and anticipated demands on, the strata corporation’s electrical system”. It is a permitted consideration in a discretionary list, sitting underneath the section 90.2(4) prohibition on unreasonable refusal. There is no provision entitling a strata to refuse because the service is full.

That said, capacity arguments are being run and they are landing. In Brown v. Section 1 of The Owners, Strata Plan VIS 3990, 2024 BCCRT 1058, a section refused permission for a rooftop heat pump on electrical load and other grounds, and the Civil Resolution Tribunal held the refusal was not significantly unfair — reasoning in part that the new requirement to obtain electrical planning reports, aimed partly at planning for future heating and cooling demands, showed the load concerns were rational. Worth knowing that this is a heat pump case, not an EV case, and that the applicants lost.

The reverse has also happened. In Kabut v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 1378, 2024 BCCRT 759 — a bylaw enforcement dispute about an owner charging a golf cart from a common outlet, which the applicant lost — the tribunal noted that Part 5.2 of the regulation requires a report by December 31, 2026 and found it does not prevent a strata from allowing charging while the report is being completed. A pending report is not a reason to stop.

And for a sense of how much the ground has moved: Laue v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR2435, 2023 BCCRT 232, decided in March 2023, dismissed an owner’s EV charger claim precisely because the installation was a significant change to common property that the strata could not approve without a 3/4 vote. The vote rule that decision rested on was changed by the legislature about nine months later. The capacity reasoning in it survives; the vote threshold does not. Treat anything written before December 2023 with that in mind.

I have cited those three decisions by their neutral citations and nothing more. I have not named any building, and none of them is authority for anything beyond the narrow point described.

One thing that does not follow: a charger rebate is not a report rebate

Since July 15, 2026, a strata applying for the multi-unit charger rebates under the provincial and BC Hydro programs can satisfy the planning-document requirement with an electrical planning report instead of a separate EV Ready Plan. That is a genuine saving of effort for a strata that has done its report.

It does not mean the report pays for itself. No program document I could find states that the cost of the electrical planning report itself is rebatable, and the published lists of eligible costs do not include it. I am not going to tell you it is definitely excluded, because no source says that either — only that nothing says it is covered.

What it costs, and why I am not giving you a number

I looked for a published figure or range for what an electrical planning report costs a strata and found none — not from the Province, not from the owners’ and condo associations, and not even on the contractors’ own pages, which direct you to phone for a quote. So there is no number here, because there is no number I can stand behind.

What I can tell you is where the money comes from and what to look for instead. The cost is an operating fund purpose under Act section 92(a)(iii), and it can also come out of the contingency reserve fund on a majority vote under section 96(b)(i)(A)(IV) — not the 3/4 vote that most reserve fund spending needs. Spending from the operating fund needs a 3/4 vote unless it is authorised in the budget, and the budget itself passes by a majority vote at the annual general meeting under section 103(1).

Which means the number exists, in the minutes and the budget. If the strata has engaged someone, there will be a resolution or a budget line, and you can ask for it. The Province’s own guidance for the people preparing these reports asks that the cost of the mandatory minimum report be shown separately from any optional extras — so a quote the strata has received should itemise it.

One more reason to care about timing rather than price. BC Hydro’s own advice to stratas is not to leave it late, because “The report may require monitoring of energy demand in your building over a period of six to 12 months.” A strata that has not started cannot finish quickly. If you are buying into a building that is already past its deadline with nothing commissioned, that is not a quick fix waiting to happen.

There is no renewal cycle, and that is deliberate

Depreciation reports have to be renewed. Regulation section 6.21(2) says a strata “must obtain a new depreciation report at least once every 5 years”. There is no equivalent anywhere for electrical planning reports. I read all six sections of Part 5.2 looking for one. Every five-year figure in that Part is an initial deadline keyed to the deposit of a strata plan or a phase, never an interval keyed to the last report.

The drafter plainly knew how to write a renewal cycle and chose not to write one here, and the Province reads it the same way — its guidance calls the report a permanent record that represents conditions at the time it was prepared, and sets no renewal interval.

For a buyer that cuts the wrong way. A building can satisfy section 94.1 forever with one report written in 2026, while chargers, heat pumps and in-suite loads are added year after year. The date on the front page is doing more work than it looks like.

What I could not confirm

• Whether anyone has ever been ordered to obtain one. The Civil Resolution Tribunal’s decision database would not open for me, so I could not search it. I am telling you I could not look, not that there is nothing there.
• What a report costs. No published figure from any source I could verify twice. See above.
• Whether the report’s own cost is rebatable under any program. Nothing says it is. Nothing expressly says it is not.
• Which islands are in and out. The regulation excludes “an island … that is accessible only by air or boat” from two of the three districts and names no island at all. The Province’s page offers Bowen Island and the Southern Gulf Islands as its examples. Those are the Province’s interpretation, not the words of the regulation. The Fraser Valley Regional District has no island exclusion in the regulation at all.
• The commencement date of the 2025 amendment that widened the list of qualified professionals. The Province’s page gives a date; the consolidated regulation shows the amendment but not its in-force date, so I have not printed the date.

What to ask, and who to ask

• Order the Form B and read paragraph (p). If it says yes, every report must be attached — check they are actually there.
• If it says yes, turn to the peak demand and spare capacity line. That is the number.
• Check the date on the report and ask what has been installed since.
• Check who wrote it, and whether that category of professional is the right one for a strata plan with these buildings on it.
• If it says no: ask whether anyone has been engaged, and look for the resolution or budget line. Then check the deadline that applies to this strata plan, which depends on where the land is and when the plan was deposited.
• If you intend to install a charger, ask whether any owner has made a section 90.1 request yet, and what happened.
• Read the minutes and the AGM package alongside it. A capacity problem shows up as a deferred request long before it shows up as a levy.

The strata corporation and its manager are the right people to ask, through the Form B and the records request. For how the rules themselves work, the Province’s strata electrical planning report page is the official starting point, and the Strata Property Regulation is the law itself. The Condominium Home Owners Association of BC publishes bulletins on these reports for strata councils, which is useful reading if you are about to join one. For your own property, get advice from a lawyer or notary before your subject removal date, not after.

Read next

• What a Form B Information Certificate tells you before you buy
• The strata depreciation report, and what to look for in it
• What the strata insurance deductible means for a buyer
• Strata rental and age restrictions in BC
• What happens when a strata is wound up
• All North Shore buying and selling guides
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This is general information about British Columbia strata law, not advice about a specific property, a specific strata corporation or a specific report. Every figure, date and quotation here was taken from the primary source and checked again in a separate pass. The Strata Property Act pages I relied on printed “current to October 13, 2026”; the Strata Property Regulation printed “current to October 20, 2026”; the Province’s electrical planning report page showed a publication date of June 5, 2026. Statutes, regulations, prescribed forms, fees and utility programs change, and a regulation can be amended between the day I read it and the day you read this. Confirm anything you are relying on with the authority that owns it — the Province for the legislation, the strata corporation for its own records — and take professional advice from a lawyer or notary before you commit. Verified and last reviewed October 2026.

Written by Tom Jahed, licensed REALTOR®, Vanak Realty, North Vancouver.