Insurance and the Resilient Homes Fund

The Resilient Homes Fund aimed to increase the resilience of as many eligible homes as possible, so it was available to both insured and uninsured homeowners.

For insured homeowners, insurance repairs usually involve ‘like for like’ replacements (e.g. replacing damaged plasterboard wall linings with new plasterboard).

The Resilient Homes Fund financed flood resilient design and materials (e.g. replacing damaged wall linings with flood-resilient wall linings such as fibre cement sheeting).

However, you could not access public funds to complete works that had been, or could have been, funded from other sources (these are known as overlap works). More information about overlap works is provided below.

Making an insurance claim

You needed to make a claim with your insurer before applying for funding if:

• you were seeking funding through the Resilient Retrofit program or to demolish and rebuild your home and
• your home insurance policy covered inundation by floodwaters from one of the 2021–22 disaster season events.

If you were insured and a claim was not made, we could not have progressed your funding application.

Overlap works

Overlap works were where another funding payment, such as an insurance cash settlement payment, was available for eligible resilient repair works or demolition and rebuild works.

Example 1:

A homeowner received an insurance payment relating to damaged walls, and sought funding for eligible works to repair the walls using resilient materials.

In this case there were overlap works and the Fund would only pay for the cost difference to upgrade to resilient materials for the insured damage area – this included materials and labour costs.

Overlap works did not include repairs that had already been completed.  If you had previously repaired your home with standard materials and then wanted to replace the walls with resilient materials, this was not considered an overlap and the eligible works would have been fully funded.

The following would be considered overlap works:

• wall lining materials
• labour to install the wall linings
• labour and materials to paint the walls
• labour and materials to reinstall the skirting board and cornice.

However, the following would be considered eligible works and funded:

• upgrade of materials to a flood resilient material, such as fibre cement sheeting, and
• activities not covered by insurance, such as material and labour costs involved with painting the frames behind the walls with a water- resistant paint.

You could receive funding for eligible Resilient Retrofit works not covered by your insurance payment (up to the value of $50,000 and any co-contribution).

Example 2:

A homeowner received an insurance payment for a damaged hardwood door. The Fund would not pay as the existing door was already resilient (being hardwood material) and the insurance funds would cover the replacement of the door.

Claim details

The difference in the insurance and resilient repair scopes of works needed to be clear in order to determine if there was an overlap in your funding application. For this reason, we required some claim details to assess your application.

Resilient Retrofit or demolish and rebuild works

If you received a cash settlement payment, you needed to include the following with your funding application:

• the Cash Settlement Fact Sheet relating to any damaged elements of the home that were included in your application; and
• the related detailed insurance builder scope of works that the insurance builder prepared, and that informed the insurer’s cash settlement payment.

If you were having works completed by your insurance builder at the same time as works funded by the Resilient Homes Fund, you needed to provide us with a detailed scope of insurance repairs.

This information helped determine any overlap works and assess your application.

Where works did overlap, we determined the funding you received based on the details you provided to us.

Where possible, the scope of works should have itemised the works and the cost of each item. For example:

Works	Costs
Supply and install new air-conditioning unit	$5,000
MDF kitchen cabinets	$12,000
Hygiene treatment	$5,000
TOTAL:	$22,000

Other Scenarios:

1. Costs were not listed with scope of works

If an insurance scope of works was provided, but the costs were not listed, a standard rate would have been applied to the overlap works to estimate the insurance payment towards these works.

You would have received funding for eligible Resilient Retrofit works not covered by your insurance payment (up to the value of $50,000 and any co-contribution).

2. No scope of works

If there was no insurance scope of works provided, the Resilient Retrofit funding would have been reduced by the cash settlement amount, minus any amounts that didn’t overlap (e.g. contents or accommodation).

3. No information about insurance payment

If you had a relevant insurance policy but did not provide details, unfortunately, your application would not have been accepted, and no funds provided.

Home raising or relocation

If you applied for financial assistance to raise or relocate your home, you did not need to provide any details of your insurance claim.

This was because the damage from flooding would have still existed and you would have needed to use your insurance to contribute to the cost of repairs (whether that’s before or after the raise or relocation).

Voluntary Home Buy-Back

If you received an offer for Voluntary Home Buy-Back, you would have needed to provide details of your insurance claim outcome before signing a contract of sale.

If you opted to take the pre-flood market value offer and accepted a cash settlement from your insurer, the pre-flood sale price would have been reduced by the total amount of insurance paid out against the insurance claim.

If you used an insurance pay-out to make your home liveable, and had receipts for the work, this would have been taken into consideration when determining the offer price and whether or not any part of the insurance payment was deducted.

Any repairs undertaken by your insurer would not have affected the sale price calculation if you opted to take the pre-flood market value. This work would have been considered as part of a post-flood valuation.

If you accepted a post-flood value, your cash settlement would not have affected the final amount.