RVA Congratulates award winning villages

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The Chief Executive Officer of the Retirement Village Association, Jane Holdsworth, has this week congratulated RVA member villages, Beachmere Sands Lifestyle Resort and Waterbrook Greenwich on their recent awards.

Queensland village, Beachmere Sands Lifestyle Resort, last month won a Master Builders Association (MBA) award in Canberra for Lifestyle Housing for Seniors.

Waterbrook Greenwich Retirement Village, in New South Wales, won three awards in 2008 including a MBA award for Excellence in Senior Living, an Urban Task Force Australia award for Best Retirement Living Development and an Urban Development Institute of Australia award in Excellence for Best Senior Living.

“On behalf of the RVA I’d like to congratulate the teams at Beachmere Sands Lifestyle Resort and Waterbrook Greenwich. I understand there was strong competition throughout the country and these wins have recognised their efforts to provide very high quality lifestyle options to senior Australians,” Ms Holdsworth said.

The RVA will next year launch its inaugural National Business Excellence Awards which aim to recognise excellence throughout the industry.

“There are so many benefits to entering business excellence awards, especially having a panel of independent experts assessing your business at no cost,” Ms Holdsworth said.

The 2009 RVA National Business Awards will set high standards for developers, operators and managers of retirement villages and organisations providing services to the retirement village industry.

The 2009 RVA National Business Excellence Awards website is now open - www.rvaawards.com.au

The RVA News Monitor is a weekly feature on the RVA website, and will provide updated stories on issues involving the retirement village industry.

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All for one and one for all, it’s all part of the act

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While there are many benefits to Australia adopting a unifying National Retirement Villages Act there are many obstacles at many levels to be overcome at many levels according to renowned industry advisor Arthur Koumoukelis, of Gadens Lawyers, speaking at the RVA National Conference in Perth last month.

Currently each state and territory has broad and various legislation guiding all aspects of the retirement village industry. The differences begin with how a retirement village is defined. Legislation also differs in its detail.

According to Mr Koumoukelis, a National Act should work for consumer protection.

“When you look at each piece of legislation you’ll find that there are certain characteristics or certain statements made as to what constitutes a village and the objectives of the act. The most common theme that keeps coming through is that the Retirement Villages Act is essentially consumer protective legislation,” Mr Koumoukelis said.

During his address to the conference he outlined three reasons why he believed a National Act would be beneficial to the industry and residents.

The benefits included; mobility, reduce barriers for multi-jurisdiction operators and the provision of certainty for residents.

“The generation coming through are likely to be mobile. They go north they come south. They go to the sunny spots to tan or to keep their blood pressure high or low whatever they do and then they come down to be close to their kids.

“You also have the very clear emergence of multi-jurisdiction operators, Lendlease, Stockland, BBC, FKP, Becton, ING that cross a number of jurisdictions.  Even small operators are multi jurisdictional when they sit close to the Murray or Tweed Heads,” he said.

Regarding the provision of certainty for residents Mr Koumoukelis said it was important for people to understand their rights and expectations regardless of where they lived in an AustralianRetirementVillage.

“It’s a consistency in language. The idea is to create a situation where people can, across jurisdictions, understand when going into a retirement village what is meant by paying an ingoing contribution, a deferred management fee or a recurrent charge,” he said.

However, there are some obstacles that would need to be overcome for a unified act to be adopted. The first and most fundamental of which is the definition of what a retirement village is. Other obstacles relate to tenancy contracts and different land title registration obligations.

“Western Australia has things such as Purple Titles and the like which is really a form of title ownership which is similar to a tenancy in common, New South Wales has a leaning toward registering leases. Victoria doesn’t,” he said.

The Retirement Village Association would like to hear from its members from all states on this issue. If you wish to respond to this story please send an email to:
communications@rva.com.au
The RVA will report on responses in a future story.

For further information or to make comment on this story, please email communications@rva.com.au

The RVA News Monitor is a weekly feature on the RVA website, and will provide updated stories on issues involving the retirement village industry.

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It’s a balancing act for directors

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The UK-based Institute of Directors has outlined the key responsibilities for directors as: determining a company’s strategic objectives, monitoring progress toward achieving objectives and policies, appointing senior management and accounting for a company’s activities with relevant parties e.g. shareholders.

While this may seem straight forward, being invited to join a board carries with it some important duties and sometimes liabilities which should be taken seriously. However, a focus on strategy is the key point one of Australia’s leading business consultants emphasises.

Innovation and strategy consultant and member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Dr Paul Wakefield, makes it his business to ensure clients understand the importance of solid strategies.

“My focus over the years has been on assisting boards to be strategic. I have tried to assist them to focus on strategy development and monitoring while the CEO and the Company focus on implementation,” Dr Wakefield said.

In the ever increasing environment of litigation there can be a tendency for directors to focus on compliance issues. Dr Wakefield said it wasn’t that such issues were unimportant but that strategy was more important.

“Board membership does carry legal and financial duties which are more stringent today than they have been in the past. I don’t see these duties as liabilities but as accountabilities which carry a challenge. Board members need to be aware of the duties and put in place systems to ensure conformance,” he said.

Along with appointing and mentoring a good CEO, board members are tasked with setting an organisation’s mission, vision and strategy. Therefore, the composition of the board must be tilted towards strategic thinkers across relevant disciplines.

“In terms of board composition I believe that a board needs to be appropriately diverse. It must have technical diversity or appropriate skill sets, personality diversity, which could include: ideas people, devils advocates and bonding people. It should also have cultural diversity,” Dr Wakefield said.

“If a board is to have such diversity it must have something which focuses its strategic thinking and this is an agreed mission, vision, and shared set of values. If these are not agreed and accepted then the board will be unmanageable because it will have a variety of strategies to go in a variety of directions. “

Getting the balance right is crucial especially during what is a challenging time for directors. There’s a market turndown, a global financial crisis, a looming economic crisis, a focus on climate change and a rise in governance legislation.

In May 2008, ASIC said that it would “…be closer to the market and stakeholders” which means that it will be watching directors even more closely than it has in the past.

According to Dr Wakefield, “The challenge for directors will be to strike a balance between society’s expectations of how they operate and the calculated risks that they are expected to take for higher economic returns to benefit society as a whole.”

For further information or to make comment on this story, please email communications@rva.com.au

The RVA News Monitor is a weekly feature on the RVA website, and will provide updated stories on issues involving the retirement village industry.

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