BC Strata Electrical Planning Report Requirements (2026 Deadline)

Most BC strata corporations now have a legal obligation many councils have never heard of: obtaining an electrical planning report (often shortened to EPR). It sits alongside the depreciation report as a new compliance item, and for stratas in the province's largest urban regions the clock runs out at the end of 2026.

What is an electrical planning report?

Section 94.1 of the Strata Property Act requires a strata corporation to obtain an electrical planning report from a qualified person, on or before the dates set in the regulations, containing the information the regulations prescribe (Strata Property Act s.94.1).

In plain terms, it is a professional snapshot of your building's electrical capacity and what it would take to add more load — most obviously EV charging, but also heat pumps and other electrification. It is a planning document, not a work order: nothing in the Act obliges a strata to install anything because of what the report says.

EPR deadline: who has to have one, and by when?

Under Regulation s.5.8, an existing strata corporation with a non-phased strata plan must obtain its electrical planning report:

• On or before December 31, 2026 if the land in the strata plan is located wholly or partly in a specified area — Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and the Capital Regional District (province of BC overview).
• On or before December 31, 2028 if the land is wholly outside a specified area.

Two important qualifications:

• Fewer than 5 strata lots on December 31, 2023? An existing strata corporation need not obtain an electrical planning report at all (s.5.8(3)). Those stratas instead face an owner-request process for EV charging infrastructure, which under Regulation s.5.4 an owner may start on or after December 31, 2026.
• New strata corporations must obtain the report within 5 years after the date the strata plan is deposited, unless the plan has fewer than 5 strata lots at deposit (s.5.8(4) and (5)).

If your strata plan is a phased strata plan, s.5.8 does not apply to you and different rules govern which phases the report must cover (Regulation s.5.12). Phased stratas should get advice on their specific deposit dates rather than assuming the general deadline.

Who can prepare it?

"Qualified person" is defined in Regulation s.5.10, and the answer depends on your buildings:

• Where every building on the strata plan is a Part 9 building (generally smaller, simpler wood-frame buildings as described in the BC Building Code), the report may be prepared by a professional engineer or professional licensee engineering registered with EGBC, an applied science technologist or certified technician registered with ASTTBC, or a journeyperson in the construction electrician or industrial electrician trade.
• For any other strata corporation — including most high-rises — only the engineer/professional licensee or the technologist/certified technician options are available. A journeyperson electrician is not a qualified person for those buildings.

What must the report contain?

Regulation s.5.11 prescribes the contents, including:

• the date of the report, and the preparer's qualifications, error and omission insurance (if any) and relationship to the strata;
• the current capacity of the strata's electrical system;
• existing demands on the system, including any EV charging infrastructure and heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting;
• current peak demand and spare capacity;
• estimated capacity needed to electrify systems currently running on another energy source, and for other anticipated future demands including future EV charging;
• steps the strata could practicably take to reduce demand, upgrades it could practicably undertake to increase capacity, and an estimate of the capacity those measures would free up.

There is a significant short-form exception: if each strata lot is supplied with electricity by a utility independently from every other strata lot, the report need only include the preparer information plus a statement to that effect (s.5.11(3)). Many townhouse-style developments fall into this category — worth confirming before you commission a full study.

Q&A for councils

Q: Does obtaining the report require an owners' vote?
No vote is needed to comply with s.94.1 itself. The vote question is about money. Under s.96, a contingency reserve fund expenditure needs only a majority vote where it is necessary to obtain an electrical planning report, necessary to obtain other reports about EV charging infrastructure or the management of the electricity it uses, or related to installing EV charging infrastructure or managing that electricity. Other CRF expenditures still require a 3/4 vote. Many councils simply budget the report cost in the operating fund instead.

Q: What is a "3/4 vote"?
It is at least 3/4 of the votes cast by eligible voters present in person or by proxy, excluding abstentions (s.1) — not 3/4 of all owners.

Q: How long do we keep the report?
Electrical planning reports are among the records a strata must retain permanently under Regulation s.4.1. They are also a conditional attachment to the Form B Information Certificate where one exists, so a missing report becomes a disclosure problem at resale.

Fitting it into your compliance calendar

The EPR arrives in the same window as the depreciation report deadline, and the two overlap usefully — capacity upgrades identified in the EPR are exactly the kind of major component work a depreciation report should fund. Councils that let one slide often let both slide; the consequences of that are covered in what happens if your strata misses the depreciation report deadline. Treat it the way you treat fire and life-safety inspections: a recurring, dated obligation with a named professional attached.

Practical steps: confirm your lot count as of December 31, 2023; check whether your land sits wholly or partly in a specified area; determine whether every building is a Part 9 building; and check whether strata lots are independently metered by the utility. Those four answers determine your deadline, your eligible preparers and the scope of the report. Tools like SearchStrata can help you run AI analysis across minutes, budgets and engineering documents to see what electrical information your strata already holds, and self-managed councils using ManageStrata can log the report date and its renewal review alongside their other statutory obligations.

This article is general information about BC strata law, not legal advice; verify against the current Strata Property Act and Regulation or consult a BC strata lawyer.