Centrelink benchmarks

Centrelink limits how much a provider can charge a participant for rent and board. SILWise works those limits out for every participant and shows them beside the proposed charge, so you can see at a glance whether a charge fits.

There are three limits, or caps. Each one is built from the Centrelink payments the participant actually receives, which SILWise reads from their payment profile. Apart from the Disability Support Pension itself, which every participant has, a payment the participant does not receive simply counts as zero.

The rental cap

Add up the participant’s Disability Support Pension and their pension top-ups. Take 25% of that total. Then add their Rent Assistance on top, in full.

The top-ups that count are Pension Supplement and, for a participant under 21, Youth Disability Supplement, Pharmaceutical Allowance, Utilities Allowance and Telephone Allowance.

Two things are worth remembering. Rent Assistance is added in full, not at 25%. Energy Supplement plays no part in the rental cap at all.

SILWise shows this figure as Max Rental Contribution.

The board cap

Take half of the participant’s Disability Support Pension, then add their Energy Supplement in full. Nothing else goes into it.

SILWise shows this figure as Max Board Contribution.

The total claimable amount

This is simply the rental cap plus the board cap. It is the ceiling on the combined rent and board charge for that participant.

SILWise shows this figure as Max Rent + Board Charge.

A worked example

Every figure below is invented to keep the sums simple. They are not current Centrelink rates, and you should never use them for a real charge.

Say a participant receives these amounts per fortnight:

Disability Support Pension: $1,000
Pension Supplement: $80
Rent Assistance: $200
Energy Supplement: $20

The three caps work out like this:

Rental cap: ($1,000 + $80) at 25% is $270, plus $200 of Rent Assistance, giving $470.
Board cap: half of $1,000 is $500, plus $20 of Energy Supplement, giving $520.
Total claimable: $470 plus $520, giving $990.

So this participant can be charged up to $470 rent and up to $520 board, and no more than $990 all up, per fortnight.

Under each cap the calculation screen puts the proposed charge and a Difference vs Proposed Charge row. Green means the charge sits inside the cap. Red means it is over, and something needs to change.

You never update rates yourself

SILWise publishes the Centrelink rates centrally and applies each indexation increase for everyone. There is no rate table for you to maintain and no spreadsheet to patch. You choose a Calc date, and SILWise uses the most recent published rates that were in force on or before that date.

Rates change twice a year

Centrelink indexes most of these payments on 20 March and 20 September each year. The under-21 amounts change on 1 January instead, and Telephone Allowance changes only in September.

SILWise publishes one rate set for 20 March and one for 20 September. Each set carries the under-21 amounts that were in force on that date. So a calculation dated February uses the under-21 amounts from the previous September’s rate set, not the ones that started on 1 January.

Practically, this means a calculation run in February and the same calculation run in April can produce different caps. That is expected, not an error.

Saved scenarios keep their own rates

When you save a scenario, SILWise stores the exact rates it used along with it. Open that scenario in a year and you still see the numbers as they stood on the day, which is what you need when someone asks why a charge was set the way it was. New calculations pick up the newer rates; saved ones do not move.

If the caps for a participant look wrong, the payment profile is almost always the place to check first.