Who usually pays for water in QLD - tenant or owner?

Just to clarify- the certificate isn’t a requirement, but it is best practice. The only requirement is that you can show the required fittings are compliant to the Wels 3 star or above rating. Not all plumbing fittings need to be compliant either (The RTA link above explains exactly what fittings need to be compliant).

What you’re describing is a rare situation where the property is part of a CTS and has an individual meter installed, but for whatever reason the utilities provider still bills the complex via a single meter, splitting the usage equally between the properties as usual.
A couple of examples I’ve seen are;
- The owner had meters installed that were not compliant to Urban Utilities standards. He was still billed on the single meter, but he had his meters read separately and invoiced the tenants accordingly.
- The strata managers haven’t bothered to get the metering methodology changed over from single to individual meters with Urban Utilities, so we’re left reading the meters ourselves until they get around to it….

The reality is that these properties are extremely uncommon. In 99% of cases, it’s either individually metered and billed that way by the Utilities provider, or it’s billed as a combined split total- in which case the tenants cannot be made responsible for any of the water usage anyway.

The only other advantage I can see with this method is that the water is paid for sooner, as opposed to waiting for the official invoices. Brisbane isn’t so bad for it, but councils like Ipswich and Logan bill water three or more months in arrears, so I get the incentive.

On the other hand, disadvantages are;
- Tenants dislike the lack of a legitimate invoice from the Utilities provider.
- Individual readings can be questioned, unlike official readings.
- Unnecessary extra work for the PM.
- Higher tier usage isn’t invoiced (agreed it’s not that common though).

Billing periods and usage periods are distinctly listed separately on the supplier invoices, so there should be no confusion. If we take entry and exit readings, it’s simple to calculate exact usage on a bill that covers over that period.

Although it is not written into the legislation or regulation, Tribunal will only award water that has been billed within a ‘reasonable timeframe’ of being received by the Landlord. It was suggested to me by one member that billing within one month would be an appropriate timeframe. If the tenant does not pay, action must be taken by the agent to recover these funds within six months of billing. If the matter is bought forward in tribunal outside of the six months the it is immediately thrown out. This is common when agents allow unpaid water to gather over a longish tenancy and attempt to claim it all back on vacate, rather than enforcing payment during the tenancy.

We’ve all come across situations where the previous agent hasn’t billed water for a long period and we’re left to claw it all back. Of course you attempt to enforce payment of all the outstanding amounts, but we do need to keep in mind what happens if it proceeds to tribunal.