Home building compensation reform

What’s this about?

Businesses in the residential building industry must buy insurance under the home building compensation (HBC) scheme for each project they do over $20,000 as a principal contractor (unless the work is of a kind that is exempt from insurance).

The HBC scheme helps homeowners if an insured business is unable to complete work on their home or honour statutory warranties due to insolvency, death, disappearance or licence suspension for not complying with a court or tribunal order to pay compensation to the homeowner.

In December 2020, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) published the findings and recommendations of a review of the HBC scheme’s efficiency and effectiveness. We are now consulting about the design of regulatory reform ideas flowing from IPART’s review.

The reform ideas are fall under three themes: 

• expand some aspects of the scheme to better support some homeowners;
• narrow some aspects of the scheme to lower the cost of some work on homes and reduce regulatory burdens or costs; and
• reconsider who should provide cover in the scheme and how they should be regulated.

Read the discussion paper for more information

Have your say

Have your say by Tuesday 16 August 2022. 

There are two ways to have your say listed below.