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Life a lot easier for small and home based businesses through RRIF demonstration project

For years small and home based business have had an onerous responsibility in understanding and complying with regulations administered by Local Government authorities. But, if the positive feedback from small business to the Whittlesea City Council is anything to go by, then this has become a thing of the past thanks to an innovative project to cut red tape and save small business time and money.

In 2004, the Australian Government established the $50 million Regulation Reduction Incentive Fund (RRIF) to provide Local Government with incentives to press ahead with regulatory reforms that benefit small and home based business. Responsibility for this program is held by the Minister for Small Business and Tourism, Fran Bailey, who said that the Australian Government is putting its money where its mouth is and funding Local Governments to cut compliance cost and help small business flourish.

The Australian Government is also working hard to cut regulation at the Federal level. However, the Minister notes that it is Local Government that small business interacts with first and most frequently, when starting or expanding a small business.

Early last year, part of the RRIF funding was used to set up a number of demonstration projects that could be used as models to be replicated in the wider competitive grants component of the RRIF program. One such demonstration project was the City of Whittlesea consortium's EasyBiz Online Business Regulation. This project has assisted small and home based businesses to understand their Local Government compliance requirements and has facilitated the compliance processing for five, high volume, Local Government regulatory processes in planning and food retailing.

A front end small business web portal was developed as the delivery model and is supported by a smart regulation knowledge management system that assesses a client's compliance needs. The portal links directly to participating websites and other business entry points, providing small business with suites of Local Government transactions.

The demonstration project, headed by Whittlesea City Council and involving Casey City Council, Manningham City Council, Murrindindi Shire Council, Surf Coast Shire Council and Wellington Shire Council, has been given the thumbs up by small businesses who participated in the trial. Collectively, these Councils account for about 25-30,000 small and home based businesses across a wide range of industry sectors in Victoria's rural, regional and metropolitan areas.

The success of the EasyBiz has been through the investment by participating councils in their online channels to improve customer service and to reduce costs for council and small businesses. Whittlesea Mayor, Councillor John Fry, said the feedback from small businesses has been very positive.

"The small businesses who've accessed EasyBiz have found it easy to use," Councillor Fry said. "Everyone knows that for small business, time is money. So creating a faster, simpler system for them makes good business sense."

And if this is not enough, the project has been extended with the City of Whittlesea and its 32 member consortium's success in obtaining $6.2 million through the competitive grants component of Australian Government's RRIF program in December last year. This will enable the project to include an additional 25 regulatory processes that will be built into a production 'whole of Victorian Local Government' platform that will be made available to all Victorian councils to use. These include, but are not limited to, land management, health and food handling and safety, permits, planning and building compliance regulations.

Business owners across Victoria will have appropriate compliance forms matched to their business and circumstance. They will have a choice of submitting relevant forms online or downloading and completing them manually.

Irrespective of the method used to complete and submit these forms, they can be processed electronically. It is intended that these online forms will be integrated into selected transactional processes and backend systems of councils. Whittlesea Council estimates are that EasyBiz will deliver significant savings in both time and money worth more than $10 million a year to about 180,000 small/home based businesses in 32 council areas.

Minister Fran Bailey congratulates all councils involved in RRIF.

"When small businesses spend less time and money on compliance, they have more time to grow their business and create jobs," the Minister said.

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources delivers RRIF through AusIndustry and business.gov.au.

For more information on AusIndustry products visit the website at www.ausindustry.gov.au or call the hotline on 13 28 46. For more information about starting and running your business, visit www.business.gov.au

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