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    • The 7 steps to Rural Proofing
    • Implications Checklist
    • Mitigation Measures
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Using Rural Proofing

• The 7 steps to Rural Proofing
• Implications Checklist
• Mitigation Measures

Mitigation Measures

This list of examples identifies possible ways to mitigate negative implications of your policy on the rural community - it is intended as a guide to prompt innovative solutions.

Connection Infrastructure

• Hold consultation meetings and hui in rural areas and at appropriate times recognising the distances and time rural people have to travel.
• Make printed copies of documents readily available.
• Allow sufficient time for rural people to participate. Recognise any extra communication lags (for example, postal delivery timeframes).
• Regulate minimum service standards or supply obligations (for example, Telecommunications Service Obligations).
• Fund minimum service standards, recognising provision costs may be higher in rural areas.
• Encourage shared use of facilities (for example, single location for mobile phone tower installations).
• Modify delivery methods (for example, satellite rather than terrestrial delivery of free-to-air broadcast services, minimising the electronic size of documents to ease transmission).
• Use provincial and rural media to communicate with rural people.

Access to Services

• Subsidise or provide free transport services (for example, funding school buses and emergency helicopters, providing transport assistance to access health services).
• Take services out into rural areas (for example mobile delivery of surgical services).
• Provide base funding, per delivery centre, in recognition that some costs are relatively constant regardless of scale (for example, base funding per school).
• Modify funding formulas to take into account higher per capita costs of delivery in rural areas (for example, modified population-based funding of district health boards).
• Target funding to assist or encourage provision in rural areas or improve access for rural people.
• Encourage combined servicing of several providers of similar services (for example, one administration provider for two or more schools).
• Sharing premises or staff with other agencies (for example, Heartland Service Centres).

Ease and Cost of Compliance

• Require delivery in isolated rural areas (for example, VTNZ’s contractual obligations to provide commercial vehicle inspection services at isolated rural locations).
• Enable alternative delivery methods to improve accessibility (for example, allowing appointments to sit a driver’s licence to be made over the telephone rather than in person).
• Provide exemptions or concessions in particular situations (for example, exemption from Warrant of Fitness for slow moving agricultural vehicles).
• Provide lead in time for implementation, to allow a competitive market to develop where compliance involves private sector provision (for example, choice of qualified engineers to meet dam safety requirements).