GOVERNMENT AND COUNTRYSIDE AGENCY
RESPONSE
The Minister of State for Rural Affairs chairs a
regular highlevel meeting involving a DEFRA team headed
by the Director General for Land Use and Rural Affairs, Anna Walker,
and a Countryside Agency team including the Chair, Vice Chair
and Chief Executive of the Agency. In July, the Minister of State
and Anna Walker will attend a meeting with the whole of the Countryside
Agency Board. This is part of the process of defining the respective
roles of DEFRA and the Agency and of creating an effective and
productive working relationship.
The starting point must be the statutory remit which
governs the Agency's activities. This can be summed up as:
1. to keep under review and advise the Government
on all matters relating to:
- the social and economic development of rural
areas
- the conservation and enhancement of the natural
history and amenity of the countryside
- the need to secure public access to the countryside
for the purposes of openair recreation
- the provision and improvement of services for
the enjoyment of the countryside.
2. to carry out, or assist others to carry out, measures
likely to further social and economic development.
3. to provide financial assistance towards expenditure
in the public and private sector which helps achieve any of the
conservation and recreational objectives.
4. to undertake or promote experimental schemes,
developing or demonstrating new techniques in conservation and
recreational management.
5. to designate National Parks, Areas of Outstanding
National Beauty (AONBs), country parks and long distance routes.
6. new powers and duties under the Countryside and
Rights of Way (CROW) Act 2000.
7. to inform the public about their rights and responsibilities
in the countryside (eg the Country Code).
In this context, leaving aside the Agency's specific
statutory functions on National Parks, country parks, AONBs, long
distance routes and those deriving from the CROW Act, we see the
Agency as having a powerful role to play in:
- work to inform rural policies and the provision
of advice to DEFRA, and also to the Rural Affairs Forum for England,
other Government departments, regional development agencies, local
authorities, the voluntary sector and other public and private
sector players in rural affairs. Examples are the State of the
Countryside Report, the Rural Services Survey, the Rural Proofing
Report, and other subject- based reports.
- experimenting and piloting initiatives of potentially
wider application such as the Vital Villages programmes where
the Agency can take greater risks and be more entrepreneurial
than would necessarily be appropriate for a central Government
department.
In essence this means that the Agency is there to
provide independent, joinedup advice across Government based
on a robust evidence, and to use its know how to show what works
through a number of innovative, relatively small scale projects.
The latter is important to provide the credibility and evidence
base for the Agency's advisory functions. The Agency is not directly
responsible for delivering Government policy except where it has
a specific statutory role (as on access to open country) or where
the Department or another part of Government has specifically
asked it to take on a particular scheme (as in the case for instance
of the charities match funding scheme for the relief of hardship
during the foot and mouth crisis).
Ruralproofing is perhaps the main area where
there could be confusion over the respective roles. The Government's
Rural White Paper, published in November 2000, gave a commitment
that in future Government policies would take account of specific
rural needs, and that each Government Department would ruralproof
its policies and report annually on the outcome. The Department
has the general responsibility within Government for ensuring
that this commitment is honoured, and accordingly liaises at Ministerial
and official level with other Government Departments who are responsible
for delivery of their part of the commitment. The Government gave
the Agency the job of helping Departments to do this, through
the production of a ruralproofing checklist for policymakers
and with advice, research and good practice.
The Agency was also given the important task of reporting
annually on the rural aspects of the Government's policies, including
the effectiveness of ruralproofing. As from this year, the
reports are being published and considered by the Cabinet SubCommittee
on Rural Affairs and the Rural Affairs Forum for England. It is
important that these reports should be independent from mainstream
Government, and therefore this function needs to be performed
by a body seen to have an arm's length remit, which the Agency
has by virtue of its statutorily independent status.
In future years, as part of its rural assurance role
the Agency proposes to focus on particularly important issues,
including crosscutting issues, rather in the mode of the
Performance and Innovation Unit of the Cabinet Office.
The Agency's role and remit is distinctive and does
not overlap with that of the Department. However, if the two roles
are to complement each other in a way that strengthens the achievement
of rural policy aims, there has to be contact and exchange of
information at every level between the Department and the Agency.
The corporate plan which sets out the Agency's programme of work
is approved by the Minister for Rural Affairs, thus ensuring that
its outputs are both complementary to those of the Department
and transparent to the Department. There are also frequent discussions
between the Minister for Rural Affairs and senior Agency and Departmental
officials to ensure that we have a fully shared mutual understanding
of how we are to work together. The Chairman of the Agency—exceptionally—also
attends meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Rural Affairs in
his capacity as "Rural Advocate".
Defining Rural
RECOMMENDATION OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE
We therefore recommend that the Agency make its
highest priority to define what is a "rural" area, and
seek to ensure that other Departments and Agencies and other public
bodies adopt the same definition. Within that overall definition
the Agency should recognize the need to categorise different types
of rural areas to reflect the different pressures they face. Final
definitions should be available by Summer 2002.
GOVERNMENT AND AGENCY RESPONSE
In the Agency's last submission to the Committee
it expressed frustration at the lack of progress in this area.
Since then the Agency and DEFRA have secured agreement with the
Office of National Statistics and Department of Transport Local
Government and the Regions colleagues on the need for a revised
interim definition, followed by a second phase of work to create
a final set of definitions based on a more sophisticated approach.
The Agency has already produced and tested an interim
approach which deals with the current wellknown anomalies
and now has agreement from Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, Department of Transport, Local Government and the
Regions and the Office for National Statistics on its immediate
adoption. Talks are also underway to initiate the second phase
of work, which, due to the complexity of the task, has a planned
completion date of early 2003.
