Rent relief requests are due tomorrow – don’t forget!

This is just a quick reminder to practitioners acting for tenants who want to claim rent relief for the period 28 July to 30 September 2021 that your request for rent relief is due tomorrow.

There is a precedent application and supporting statutory declaration on the VSBC website that is very easy to complete: see https://www.vsbc.vic.gov.au/news-publication/small-businesses-must-apply-for-rent-relief-by-30-september-to-get-backdated-relief/

Also, remember that both your application AND supporting affidavit AND supporting documents must be in tomorrow if you want to claim rent relief from 28 July 2021 (see reg 28 of the CTRS Regulations).

There is a bit of an ongoing issue about how to deliver the request that I wrote about in my last post.

Section 67 of the CTRS Regulations states that (sorry about the formatting):

67        Giving notices—general

(1)       A notice or other document to be given to a person under the Act or these Regulations by the Small Business Commission must be given—

(a)       by delivering it personally to the person; or

(b)       by leaving it at the person’s usual or last known place of residence or business with a person apparently over the age of 16 years and apparently residing or employed at that place; or

(c)       by sending it to the person by post addressed to the person’s usual or last known place of residence or business; or

(d)       if the person is a corporation— 

(i)        by sending it by post to the registered office in Victoria of the corporation; or

(ii)       by giving it to a person who is an officer of the corporation who is authorised to accept service of notices and who is employed at the registered office of the corporation; or

(e)        by electronic communication in accordance with the Electronic Transactions (Victoria) Act 2000.

(2)       If a notice or other document is to be given to a landlord under these Regulations, in addition to the methods set out in subregulation (1), the notice or document may be given—

(a)       by delivering it to the landlord or to the landlord’s agent or to the person who usually collects the rent; or

(b)       by sending it by post addressed—

(i)        to the landlord at the landlord’s address for service of documents; or

(ii)       to the landlord’s agent at the agent’s usual place of business; or

(iii)      by giving it to a person employed in the office of the landlord’s agent.

You will need to make sure that your method of delivery complies with that section.

Service by email probably requires landlord’s consent, so make sure you have that consent in writing in advance if you want to deliver the documents by email. Otherwise, you will need to use one of the other methods of delivery prescribed by the Regulations.

Sub-regulation 67(2)(a) appears to allow the request to be sent to a managing agent who receives the rent on the landlord’s behalf. However, you will still need the managing agent’s consent (preferably in writing) to send the document by email.

Be careful sending the documents by post as documents sent by post are usually presumed to have been received in the ordinary course of post (which may cause your document to be received late) and the presumption may be rebuttable by evidence that the letter was not received or was received late.