Blog for the I&DeA Rural Excellence Event

Professor Heinz Wolff October 26, 2006

Professor Wolff, of Brunel University, spoke twice at the conference, firstly on the importance of risk -taking and secondly on thinking freshly about how traditional rural life may provide solutions to the knottiest social issues.

Here he summarizes his views of the two days as a relative newcomer to the subject and explains some of his theories on government.

Cecilia Tredget, East Cambs DC October 26, 2006

Cecilia is Deputy Chief Exec of East Cambridgeshire District Council – here she explains why rural issues should take less of a back seat and what she got out of talking to other mentors over the two days. At the end she also finds that all your media training goes out the window when being filmed by an unscrupulous and maverick blogger 🙂

Mark Sturgess, Purbeck DC October 26, 2006

Mark works for Purbeck District Council and has been involved in the Bridgnorth mentoring team. He tells us here what he’s got out of the two days and what he’s learned about mentoring.

David Wilford, GO Yorks & Humber October 26, 2006

David Wilford from the Yorkshire and Humberside Government Office gives us his views on the rural mentoring programme and the conference from his perspective.

Brian Wilson, Commission for Rural Communities October 26, 2006

Brian, a Director at the Commission for Rural Communities, expands on what he said about shire government in his keynote session earlier in the day.

Cllr Jim Ranger, East Hertfordshire DC October 26, 2006

Cllr Ranger from East Herts gives us his reflections on the usefulness of getting people together in this sort of event and on what he’d just heard from John Mills and Brian Wilson.

Cllr Jonathan Owen, ERYC October 26, 2006

Jonathan Owen from the East Riding of Yorkshire Council gives us his thoughts on Rural Excellence and on his concerns about the CRC’s proposals for shire government.

Shire Local Government: time for change? Brian Wilson, Commission for Rural Communities October 24, 2006

This discussion paper was published in the summer.

A lot of debate about the structures of local government not least through the Lyons review and the imminent white paper. But it’s striking that this was mostly about urban issues – improving neighbourhood governance in urban areas – but little on shire government.

So what would serve rural communities best? Of course they should have a view on the greater urban areas but there were two issues to focus on:

getting towards powerful new unitaries working closely with a renewed structure of empowered town and parish councils as well sas other neighbourhood level structures.

There have been some rural unitaries, but often the doughnut effect. There has been some strengthening of parish and neighbourhood governance but we feel there is further to go.

Why shire unitaries? Four key arguments:

Reduce public confusion and clarify accountability.

Simplify strategies and partnership working – complexity of two-tier government is too much.

Increase the resource base, to give shire authorities more flexibility.

Increase the clout of shire authorities within their regions – not just in debate, but about targets, strategies and the allocation of money.

This to go hand in hand with a strengthened town and parish council structure, which is a substantial resource that is underused:

Parish plans/market town plans; Community call for action; Resource base eg match-funding or access to business rates; Charters with principal authorities.

CRC about to launch an enquiry on rural community participation in decision making see http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk

Rural Delivery Pathfinders – John Mills, Rural Policy Director, Defra October 24, 2006

Pathfinders were announced in 2004 – the real purpose as developing the strategy was to ensure that in the process of devolving decision making mechanisms were in place for Central Government to engage better with Local Authorities.

8 Areas around England

The initial aims in the prospecturs were local priority setting, encouragement of innovative joined up solutions to rural delivery problems, deciding what at local level works best – all embedded in the rural strategy – none rocket science but worth saying anyway.

In addition it was about creating a mechanism for rural polic relationship with local govt; giving extra strengh to the way councils can engage in the policy debate; helping government to appreciate the policy challenge at local level; integration of rural funding streams; making the rural side of LAAs go better.

It was clear that central govt really didn’t have a clue about how local govt works in this sphere and that has improved (a bit). They were anxious too to deal with the integration of funding streams primarily by helping authorities understand how they flow.

Progress in the last eighteen months, so significant outcomes are hard to see – but there is progress – testing and strengthening of existing relevant partnerships; there are lots of interesting things being done and contemplated (many might have been done anyway, but pathfinders have given a forum for talking about them and probably improving them as they go); seeing good central-local dialogue (including GOs); and the impact on rural LAAs – not all the way, but clearly progress.

However the funding streams integration hasn’t got very far except to help everyone learn how difficult it is to understand!

Next Steps:

This was established as a 2 year programme to fit in with the anticipated spending round. Next year will ensure there’s some proper reportage including a national conference to hear from those involved in the pathfinders and to learn lessons.

Important not to stop in 2007 when the programme finishes – good things need to continue!

Will also want to broaden and mainstream the process (drop the ‘pathfinder’ tag) but keep enough structure to allow influencing to happen.

Start thinking hard about new challenges:

intensified LAAs and LSPs – the local government white paper is to be released very shortly – this will be tremendously important and hopefully encouraging.

improving rural delivery partnerships at regional as well as local level;

a new Rural Development Programme to start sometime next year – RDA’s will be spending £80m a year in England covering the competitiveness of farming (Access 1) and the socio-economic side (Access 3), so need a step change in the way that Government, Local Government and the Voluntary Sector relate to the RDAs;

implementing the Leader-approach – 5% must be spent in this manner.  In practice a large amount of this will be found from the socio-economic side.  So making this work properly will be mission-critical.  Some of the work done in the pathfinder process will be very important in making this work.
economic, social and environmental ‘integration’ in the new RDP.

We hadn’t thought of this when we set up the pathfinders, but we said it was important that we had a better relationship with you and it’s gratifying that that groundwork has been laid ahead of these important trends.

And so whither Rural policy?  Under Miliband we are taking stock (or throwing it up in the air and seeing where it might land) – so much talk of “mainstreaming” rural policy but little understanding yet of what that might actually mean.  What we do know though is that the importance of rural policy is undiminished at a national and european level.

Officers Discussion October 24, 2006

On the morning of day one, council officers got together to talk through the experience of the mentoring scheme from their perspective.