Self-Employed

The easiest way to keep a track of your service in real-time is by logging in to the LeavePlus member portal. Your service record will be updated every time you pay your quarterly long service charge contribution. You can also check how much long service leave you have built up by viewing the ‘entitlement’ screen in the member portal.

Each year LeavePlus generates your annual Statement of Service which details the total service you have built up with LeavePlus as well as a breakdown of the service you had built up in the previous financial year.

You may have built up service with LeavePlus previously as a worker or apprentice. Whilst employed by a business as a worker or apprentice, your employer is required to report your service to LeavePlus on quarterly Workers Days and Wages returns.

Any service that you have built up as a worker or apprentice can be used along with the service you build up as a self-employed working subcontractor. When you have built up a total of seven years of continuous service, you will be eligible to claim a long service leave entitlement.

Visit our Workers – building up service page and our claiming long service leave page.

The interstate reciprocal agreement means that if you work interstate, your time in the industry can still be counted towards long service leave. However, you must notify and register with the relevant long service leave scheme – contact details are located here.

It is also important that you notify LeavePlus so that our records note that you have long service leave credits elsewhere. Until you actually apply for long service leave, your record of service in the industry is kept separately in each State/Territory scheme. Please also notify interstate schemes and LeavePlus of any change of address.

Can I roll my interstate service together?

No. The record for any service accrued in a certain state can only be recorded with the state authority in which the work was performed i.e. LeavePlus can only keep record of your work done in Victoria – you cannot transfer any interstate record onto your record with us.

However, you can use all of your interstate service together, but only when you make a claim for Long Service Leave. Simply complete the interstate section of the claim form for your current host state, and any interstate entitlements can be paid out to you as part of your claim.

You can have breaks from recorded service for a maximum of up to four years. As long as your service record has gaps of no more than four years, you can build up on top of your previously accrued service credits as one continuous service record.

However, if you have a gap of more than four years, your previous service record will be made inactive and you will not be able to build up on top of what you already had, as the gap will be considered too large to be classed as continuous. Any eligible entitlements accrued from previous service blocks will still be claimable.

If you were a non-contributing subcontractor during a Break In Service period, you can provide LeavePlus with evidence that you were still in the industry at that time by sending us a copy of the taxable income page of your tax return for that year (showing your ABN, work type, and total financial income for that financial year). As long as this evidence shows you were contracting in Victoria during this time, with gaps of no more than four years between this evidence and your recorded service credits, then we can apply an Approved Break In Service to your account, whereby your service will be classed as one continuous block (provided the evidence is not prior to 1 Dec 1997).

Service as a subcontractor cannot be backdated – as contributions are optional for subcontractors, if you did not contribute at the time, you will have lost out on any possible service credits for that time.

Workers are eligible to start receiving service credits from the starting date of their first employer or after the date coverage commenced for your trade within the construction industry. There are two different calculations, dependent on when your service was performed:

Any service accrued prior to 1 July 2002 is based on an accrual of 0.866 weeks of LSL per full year of accrued service (equivalent to 13 weeks after 15 years’ service).

Service accrued after 1 July 2002 is based on an accrual of 1.3 weeks of LSL per full year of accrued service (equivalent to 13 weeks after 10 years’ service).