checking for .forward as root, not exim?

Hello --

We currently have exim set up to run as an exim user, instead of root,
where possible. Mostly, this seems like a good idea. However, yesterday,
one of our more paranoid users did a chmod 700 on his home directory, and
now exim cannot tell whether or not he has a .procmailrc file (which
our set of directors checks for with require_files) and, thus, all of this
user's mail is getting deferred.

The only sollutions I can think of are a) telling the user that his home
dir must be world-readable (or, slightly more clever but more ugly, that
he must chgrp his home dir to the exim group and make it group-readable)
or b) making exim run as root, full-time. Both of these seem rather
half-assed sollutions. Is there a way to make exim check for (and read)
.forward files (or other files looked at via require_files) as root,
rather than as exim? Are there other sollutions to this problem that
people can think of?

(This seems like a semi-FAQ. Is there an official-ish FAQ effort going
yet?)

-Chris