Rural Needs

The Rural Needs Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 introduced a new duty on Northern Ireland departments, district councils and other public authorities to have due regard to rural needs when developing, adopting, implementing or revising policies, strategies and plans, and when designing and delivering public services.

The purpose of the Act is to ensure that public authorities have due regard to the social and economic needs of people in rural areas when carrying out certain activities and to provide a mechanism for ensuring greater transparency in relation to how public authorities consider rural needs when undertaking the above activities.

For further information on the Rural Needs Act, you can download a copy of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affair’s Guide to the Act by clicking below.

In addition, you can also download copies of the Council’s Rural Needs Annual Monitoring Reports, see below.