Business View Oceania

25 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 intending residents, of a Summary of Key Terms; and Compliance with Best Practice Guidelines for Disclosure of the Right to Transfer to Care within a Retirement Village. A full list of membership benefits is available on the RVA website. CEO John Collyns shares his valuable insight into RVA’s background, purpose, projects, and future plans. “In the late 80s, our association pioneers decided they need to have a regulatory body to create some industry standards, because right then it was a very new industry that didn’t have its own framework. A year or so later, they developed the industry standards, which then morphed into our current legislative code of practice. The Retirement Villages Act was passed in 2003, from which the code of practice and so forth came into effect. Its final iteration was in 2007, which is when I joined the association. Our role to date has primarily been to get outcomes from government policy which are beneficial to our members, and that includes both local government through resource management type issues, consuming and campaigning issues, and from central government specifically around retirement legislation, but also other legislation which impacts on the industry, such as building standards, employment law, etc.” Design and construction challenges have made physical development and expansions difficult for RVA members, Mr. Collyns says. “This is an issue that is common across New Zealand and for other industries, not just ours. Finding the right piece of land in the right location and at the right price is near impossible, and finding qualified, skilled workers to run construction efforts continues to be a challenge. Another issue is around regulatory intervention, which we are trying to minimise, because the beauty of our legislation right now is it’s very flexible. It allows people to develop new retirement village offerings and different business models to meet changing market circumstances, and we see that as being one of our principal advantages, since it allows us to respond quickly to changing market trends. We work hard to remain consistent it our communication to stakeholders across the industry, which isn’t really a challenge as such, but requires ongoing RET I REMENT V I LLAGE ASSOC I AT ION OF NEW ZEALAND (RVA)