An initiative of the South Australian Retirement Villages Association (SARVRA) has put at least an average $271.40 coming back into the pockets of 15,500 retirement villagers in SA. This equates to $4,206,700 a year.
Four years ago, SARVRA identified discriminatory State Government valuation policies and water rate charges being applied to retirement villages. SARVRA negotiated with the SA Government to establish a parliamentary committee to investigate.
“The parliamentary committee has now supported SARVRA’s recommendation for the creation of one valuation assessment per village, beginning with the upcoming July quarter payments, rather than the individual resident assessments, as were previously happening,” said SARVRA President Bob Ainsworth (pictured).
“In real terms, this means 15,500 SA village residents will now no longer have to pay the $271.40 pa. water supply charge.
“As well, many residents will also no longer be subject to a minimum sewer charge, resulting in a reduction of the currently listed $290.80 annual charge per resident,” added Mr Ainsworth.
This is a further saving of up to $4.5M a year.
Eligible residents will continue to receive State Government concessions on their water accounts, which will now be paid direct to their bank accounts. Mr Ainsworth said this exercise also highlighted the benefits of dedicated, voluntary organisations, like SARVRA, that can identify these special types of issues and then work with Government to achieve fairer outcomes.
“An added bonus for our members is that this project demonstrates SARVRA membership sure offers value for money!” Mr Ainsworth said.
“This has saved our individual members the equivalent of almost 60 years of their annual $5 membership fees, for this year alone!”
