# Summary

- Link: https://dearsouthafrica.co.za/review-of-burdens-imposed-on-local-government-by-legislation/summary/
- Published: 2019-06-20T16:14:41+02:00
- Author: dearSA

## DOWNLOAD DOCUMENTS

 * [Full Media Release](http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/media/20190503-IP37-Proj146.pdf)
 * [Discussion Paper](http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/ipapers/ip37-proj146-2019May.pdf)

[ < HAVE YOUR SAY ON THE REVIEW OF BURDENS ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT](https://dearsouthafrica.co.za/review-of-burdens-imposed-on-local-government-by-legislation/)

## SUMMARY

PAPER 37: REVIEW INTO REGULATORY, COMPLIANCE AND REPORTING BURDEN IMPOSED ON LOCAL
GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATION

The South African Law Reform Commission (Commission) has included in its program
a review into regulatory, compliance and reporting obligations imposed on local 
government through legislation – Project 146. An issue paper relating to this inquiry–
Issue Paper 37 – has now been published for general information and comments.
 The
supervision of local government by the other spheres of government through, among
other things, legislation, is a constitutional imperative – intended to ensure that
the values of accountability and transparency are not rendered meaningless. However,
it appears that municipalities are buckling under the rigours of legislation intended
to structure the institutions and processes of local government. This inquiry therefore
seeks to establish the nature and extent of this problem and address it by identifying
burdensome regulatory, compliance and reporting obligations placed on local government
by national legislation;

garnering evidence of the impacts of these obligations; and by exploring ways to
remove or reduce these obligations.

As not all regulation is bad, it is necessary to describe those
 legislative obligations
that we seek information on and examples of. The Commission wants to seek out those
obligations that impose unnecessary or excessive costs on local government because
they are duplicative, unclear, complex, overly prescriptive, create unintended or
unexpected workload, impose onerous requirements or cause unnecessary delays. The
distinguishing feature of these obligations therefore is that the costs of complying
with them often outweigh any benefits achieved by such compliance. It is these statutory
obligations that are the focus of this review. It is hoped that the outcome of this
review will free up to the maximum extent possible local government resources to
enable it to focus on delivering services to communities whilst maintaining accountability
and good governance as required by the Constitution. To this end, the Commission
is calling on interested parties to make submissions about:

 onerous regulatory, compliance and reporting obligations as defined above;
  
how, in practice, these obligations affect municipalities;  any proposals on how
to streamline o remove these obligations;  what impact, if any, streamlining or
removing these obligations would have for municipalities, other organs of state 
and communities.