Prior to 2015 Council had no hardship policy. A ratepayer, even if in crippling financial hardship, would be charged oppressive penalty interest rates (which is approximately more than double home loan rates offered by the major banks) on any unpaid rates.
Recognising that financial hardship can be experienced by many in our community, Council accepted my proposal to the 28 April 2015 meeting that Council develop a hardship policy.
The policy is to be developed based on recent work by the MAV and the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH) which has worked together to develop Hardship Policy Guidelines for councils (MAV/PILCH Guidelines).
I have separately asked officers to begin a review of our current practices against the MAV/PILCH Guidelines. Following this review, I am planning to present a number of recommendations to Council to improve our practices to be more aligned with the best practice approaches outlined in the MAV/PILCH Guidelines. Among other things, I am intending to recommend that we do the following:
- adopt a hardship policy based on the MAV/PILCH Guidelines;
- include information on this policy and available options on our website and in other appropriate places;
- introduce a Centrelink ‘CentrePay’ payment option;
- introduce staff training on hardship;
- have a standing policy to agree to revoke infringement notices upon a special circumstances application being made to us which cites homelessness as the reason for the special circumstances application;
- require any external parties we use for following up debt collection to have training in place for all of their staff in hardship consideration and to demonstrate their compliance with this;
- have a policy in place to reduce the interest which accumulates on unpaid rates from being based on the Penalty Interest rate to a lower and fairer rate in instances where hardship or financial difficulty can be shown (or otherwise waive the interest payable altogether);
- develop a ‘rights and Responsibilities’ charter similar to the one used by Western Water and referred to in the MAV/PILCH Guidelines; and
- introduce a rate deferral option for pensioners and others who can demonstrate financial or temporary hardship and for this to be based on a low interest rate which is also fair to other ratepayers by avoiding them cross-subsidising the financing of such an arrangement.
Given Council’s focus on improving the fairness of the Monash rating system, it is appropriate it also develop a new, best practice financial hardship policy for Monash. This policy will be developed over the coming months and its starting point will be observing all of the MAV/PILCH Guidelines.
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