C33/2000 PROPERTY VALUATION EXERCISE - 2000/2001 FINANCIAL YEAR

Purpose

The purpose of this Departmental Instruction is to provide information on the various stages of the annual property valuation exercise.

Background

Every November, specific income support cases requiring a property valuation are automatically selected and forwarded to the Australian Valuation Office (AVO) for valuation by April in the following year.  Once the valuations have been completed, they are forwarded back to DVA with the new valuation amount.  The output is then forwarded to the State Offices for updating.

A listing of manual cases is also produced at the time of the bulk run.  State Offices are required to manually prepare and forward these cases to the AVO.

Due to the implementation of IPS schedules previously printed for State Office use are no longer available.  Automatic and Manual cases will be provided to the states in a Microsoft Excel format.

Production run

The data extraction was carried out on 26 November 2000.  The data containing information on the automatic review was forwarded to the AVO on 30 November 2000.  Excel spreadsheets for automatic and manual cases have been provided to the State Offices.

Number of cases extracted

The number of Manual cases is approximately half the total number that has been extracted in previous years.  This is the first year that this data has been extracted from AIS 2000.

The AIS queries have been tested and no flaws have been discovered. However, a drop of this magnitude cannot be explained.  Any comments from state offices would be appreciated.

The following is a breakdown of automatic and manual cases extracted from this years bulk run:

State

Auto

Manual

NSW

743

187

VIC

779

104

QLD

618

77

SA

165

37

WA

162

45

TAS

185

21

Total

2652

471

Criterion for extracting cases

The following criteria was used for extracting cases:

• All income support and income support supplement recipients who are asset tested;
• All income support and income support supplement recipients who are income tested but have assets within $10,000 of their prescribed asset limit and have property, business, farm or sublet portion of their home.

Note – Bring Em Back pensioners were included in this year's data extraction.

Cases excluded from exercise

The following pensioners have been excluded from this year's bulk run.

• Pensioners who have had an AVO property valuation done since the last bulk run (21 November 1999).
• All single pensioners who are assessed as blinded and are not paid rent assistance
• All couples where both are assessed as blinded and are not paid rent assistance

State Office to action manual cases

Manual cases have been forwarded to the State Offices in an Excel format for further action.

State Office action is required to provide the AVO with a form containing detailed information on each of the manual cases where a property valuation is required.  Records are to be kept and a Claims Management Systems (CMS) case should be created to ensure that all such requests are returned by the AVO and action completed.

AVO conduct valuations

The AVO will conduct the necessary valuations in the period from December 2000 to April 2001.  The AVO will update the valuation information and forward the updated information to DVA by the end of April 2001.

Updated data forwarded to State Offices

Printouts and an Excel spreadsheet of the updated property valuations will be provided to the contact officer in each State Office.  These reports can be expected early May 2001.

State Office update valuations

Once the updated data is received manual action will be required to update the Central Data Base (CDB) to take effect in conjunction with the indexation of the free areas in July 2001 (Ordinary Income Free Area, Asset Value Limit & Adjusted Income Free Area).  Cases where the value of property has reduced may be actioned for increase of the service pension from the next convenient payday.

Date of valuation to be used

All States should use 26 November 2000 as the date of valuation when updating cases from this exercise.

It is essential that this date be used to enable all the appropriate cases to be selected for next year's exercise.  Using another date creates complications for the bulk extraction.

Processing Information

Screens and processing information for PIPS/PC can be found in Departmental Instruction C54/96.

Contact Officer

The contact officer for this exercise is Lucy Berger (02) 6289 6013, Business Operations and Support Section, Income Support Branch.