Red tape removal

By Andrew Stackpool

DCO representative Janet Durling speaks with newly posted-in AC Stuart Pluis and his wife Kate at the Tindal welcome expo.

Photo by LAC Greg Pierce.

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* DHA will soon trial a process where families posting to a new area can start looking for a house before submitting an AFR.

THE DHA home find scheme will be made simpler with changes to the Application For Removal (AFR) process.

DHA national operations manager Kevin O’Brien said the changes would address concerns that DHA had been “keeping a lot of houses in the ‘top drawer’ for our friends and referring ‘ordinary’ people to HomeFind”.

“The problem that has remained from our work on the system is that we have not had sufficient houses listed on the site to meet people’s needs.”

DHA has found that while the HomeFind system has maximised opportunities for people to look for houses, DHA had no way of ensuring it had enough houses listed on the site.

It also found that most of the information contained in the AFR was unnecessary for people to start looking for a new house.

“This year we plan to make the process easier by a simple tactic: we send the member a tear-off card or similar that tells us that the member is posting, their preferred contact details, confirms they are taking up the posting and when they’d prefer to go,” Mr O’Brien said.

“Once we get that information, we shall immediately check the house will be suitable for another tenant, lease, state of repair, etc. Typically we expect that in three days we will be in a position to put the place on HomeFind [web site] and thereby create a bank of houses there. Only then would we go back to the member confirming the details they provided, advising them their place is now on HomeFind and then providing them their PIN so they may start looking.”

Mr O’Brien said there would be advantages from this change:

• the number of homes and people looking will be roughly equal;
• information in the AFRs will be accurate and won’t need amending;
• people will know when and where they are going two or three months beforehand so they can find suitable schools and so on; and
• a member’s move will be as smooth as possible.

“It’s a win-win all round,” Mr O’Brien said.

“We’re still nutting out the final details but expect to trial it during the first posting cycle this year.” This process complements changes DHA made to its web site in September last year allowing members to reserve houses on HomeFind.

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