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STEP ONE: DEVELOP GEOGRAPHIC ACCESS STANDARDS

Geographic access standards are used in accessibility studies and service delivery planning to determine
the optimum provisioning and location of service points, with a view to meeting the population demand
for services. They can also assist departments to achieve a more equitable distribution of service points.

Access standards generally include the following:
❏ Maximum distances for beneficiaries to travel to their closest service points in different types of human
settlements, for instance, the maximum distance for learners to walk to a primary school in a sparsely
populated rural area.

❏ Population thresholds for service points in order for them to be able to provide quality services to the
target population, for instance, the maximum and minimum number of learners per classroom for
different sizes and types of schools.

As the geographic landscape of South Africa and density of the population vary extensively from area to
area, access standards should be differentiated for different types of settlements such densely populated
urban settlements and remote rural settlements which are sparsely populated and where travel distances
are much longer. The standards should also be differentiated for various types and sizes of facilities.
Note that developing geographic access standards is only the starting point for meeting the service
delivery demand of the population. Departments should combine their geographic access standards
with other norms and standards for service points, such as service delivery standards and internal
capacity and facility infrastructure standards.

Developing geographic access standards is

just the beginning.

There are five key activities in developing geographic access standards (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The five key activities in developing geographic access standards

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