Three-month delay for PPSR

The date of the introduction of the new Personal Property Securities Register is to be pushed back to at least 30 January 2012 and probably to an even later date. The commencement date for the PPSR had previously been set for 31 October this year.

Officials of the Attorney-General's Department outlined the expected shift in the timetable at an industry briefing in Sydney on Friday.

As reported over the last two weeks, banks and other users have encountered difficulties with the user acceptance testing and discovery environments, and some critical features have been tested under a compressed time frame over recent weeks.

The legislation - the Personal Property Securities Act - stipulates a commencement date of 1 February 2012 (a Wednesday) - rather than a date to be fixed by proclamation.

A late January start date may still present practical problems, even assuming that the approximately five months between now and the revised start date are sufficient to sort out the systems' issues identified over recent weeks.

Banks and other complex businesses often defer major system implementations until well after the peak holiday season, a period when key staff and contractors may not be available.

On the other hand, a range of stakeholders - such as the state government agencies operating the registers being rolled up under the PPSR - have been planning to let surplus staff go before the end of the year.

The Personal Property Securities Register will take over from the separate registers covering shipping, motor vehicles, fisheries, company charges, bills of sale and stock mortgages.