No Change To Electrical Services Levy

25 July, 2002

No Change To Electrical Services Levy

ACC will not be reviewing increases to the Electrical Services employer levy rate for 2002/2003.

Earlier this year the Electrical Contractors Association, ECANZ, questioned whether a 22% increase in the levy was due to the incorrect classification of one employee who had suffered a serious injury.

ACC levies reflect the cost of injuries within specific industries and ECANZ suggested the employee’s classification should be related to the electricity industry, not electrical services.

ACC’s Injury Prevention and Client Services General Manager Darrin Goulding said a thorough investigation had determined that there was no need to review the levy rate.

“We are satisfied that the injured employee was correctly classified by his employer. Consequently there has been no misallocation of claim costs that may have artificially inflated the Electrical Services levy rate,” Mr Goulding said.

“I would also note that the full cost of this unfortunate claim was not applied in assessing the levy increase.”

Mr Goulding said that ACC legislation permitted an employer, under appropriate circumstances, to use more than one classification for the payment of levies.

The employer involved in this issue was engaged in a range of activities, but each business unit had been correctly classified for the work it was performing.

The employee was installing a high voltage switchboard at the time of the accident but Mr Goulding noted that the application of the Electrical Services classification was not limited to lower voltage electrical work.

It covered electrical installation or maintenance work in buildings or on construction projects, regardless of the system voltage. The work could be domestic, commercial, or industrial.

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