Further supplementary memorandum submitted
by the Local Government Association [RE 19b]
THE POTENTIAL
OF ENGLAND'S
RURAL ECONOMY
You wrote to my colleague Jonathan Blay following
our evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
on 12 May seeking further information on two matters:
— Local Government Association involvement
in and response to Commission for Rural Communities work on health
policy following the Department of Health "Leading Local
Change" report.
— Examples of good practice in local
authorities in developing economic well-being that might inform
practice and Defra objectives for "strong rural communities".
HEALTH POLICY
The Local Government Association was not directly
involved in the Commission for Rural Communities report, but has
been involved in relevant discussions with the Commission about
healthcare needs and delivery in rural areas. We have—and
continue to be—engaged with the NHS Review.
In principle, the Local Government Association
believes that effective, high quality and accessible healthcare
services should be available to citizens whether they live in
urban or rural areas, and that healthcare services need to be
responsive to the needs of citizens and the characteristics and
circumstances of the communities they serve.
In this context, a simple urban / rural distinction
may be less helpful than ensuring that services are configured
appropriately to meet distinctive local needs and circumstances,
for example, population sparsity, relative remoteness from urban
centres, the local demographic profile or the socio-economic circumstances
of individuals and communities. We know that such factors vary
widely across rural England, as they do across urban areas. In
addition, a key principle should be strong local accountability
for the services provided.
EXAMPLES OF
GOOD PRACTICE
A key plank of our evidence is that policy and
practice must respond to needs of local communities and economic
circumstances and therefore avoid one size fits all approaches.
However annex 1 contains three varied examples that offer insights
into approaches that have worked.
T D Allen
Programme Director: Analysis and Research
Local Government Association
Annex 1
EXAMPLES OF GOOD PRACTICE
1. PENWITH DISTRICT
COUNCIL, CORNWALL
1. The Penwith Farm Business Advice Centre
was set up following the last foot and mouth outbreak as a working
partnership embracing District and County Council, The Bolitho
Estates, The St Aubyn Estates, Tregothnan Estates and numerous
other private and public individuals, with funding drawn from
EU monies administered through DEFRA.
2. The objective was to understand the needs
and impacts on farmers in West Cornwall and help them make necessary
changes: initial work showed that despite a plethora of advice
and support, many farmers still needed help to see the first steps
towards change.
3. With start up funding of £30,000
from Job Centre Plus, the District Council's Rural Economy Officer
and Bolitho Estates Land Agent met and developed an action plan
to deliver change. They asked the six most productive farmers
in the District to meet and help develop a farm business advice
service. These farmers then wrote the job description and interviewed
both formally and informally prospective "Whole Farm Advisers".
Following the appointment of an Adviser this group has continued
meeting every month to discuss and support the Adviser in often
difficult and complex issues. Due to the nature of the work they
are and remain anonymous.
4. The Centre was evaluated in 2004 by the
University of Exeter and has since started work to build on this
to develop a "balance sheet" for the value of food and
farming in the district. In summary, the evaluation found that:
— The Centre had "its roots in
the farming crisis of late 1990s and represents the partial implementation
of one of the principal recommendations arising from the study
Agriculture in Penwith: Report 2000[2].
That report identified the need for a `one stop shop' facility
to promote rural development, which would act as a catalyst in
helping the farming sector to collaborate, stimulate new thinking,
encourage the uptake of training and signpost the existing provision
of support and development opportunities."
— The objective was to help farmers
and farm families to recognise the need for professional help
and to access the most appropriate form of such help to enable
them to become effective managers of their businesses, to establish
new markets for their products and to help (some) farmers to retire
with dignity.
— The approach is unusual in the breadth
of support offered, including social as well as economic goals.
— Steering Group members were strongly
supportive of the breadth of the Scheme, albeit with some healthy
differences of emphasis, and that stakeholders were also generally
very supportive of the Scheme's breadth.
— The Centre uses as a diagnostic framework
a four-fold categorisation of clients' businesses around which
help is tailored according to classification. The four are:
a) Category A: Economically sound and well-established
(0%).
b) Category B: Economically sound with affordable
borrowings (36%).
c) Category C: Below benchmark performance,
often with sizeable borrowings (41%).
d) Category D: Well below benchmark, over-borrowed,
struggling to survive (23%).
5. The research looked at the Centre's performance
and concluded that overall the service "seems to be pitched
at the right level with nearly all clients likely to renew their
contract if they had another problem to discuss. The evaluation
found `almost universal client regard for the Centre and the benefits
they've received: the centre was clearly impacting positively
on clients' management of their farms with strengths that included
on-going support, independent advice, appropriate interventions,
a sounding board for new ideas (and free professional help)".
2. BRADFORD METROPOLITAN
BOROUGH COUNCIL:
DATA AND
INTELLIGENCE
6. This is an example of what might ostensibly
be considered an urban authority seeking to understand and plan
policy interventions for its rural areas in a way which moves
away from notions of the traditional rural/urban dichotomy.
7. Bradford have developed an approach which
enables them to model their interventions around the neighbourhood
agenda across the whole Borough. In doing so, they seek to understand
the challenges both around rural and urban integration, and wider
community cohesion within one agenda. In rural terms, the most
important issue is the consideration of the patterns and nature
of settlements across the District, and the relationship between
them. By area, 60% of the District is "rural".
8. Bradford does not have a rigid or separate
approach to rural issues: instead they place high priority on
this neighbourhood agenda, i.e. they work at local level with
some 80 neighbourhood forums across the Borough which meet three
times per year. Over the last 10 years the District has also moved
from seven to 17 parish councils.
9. The council has a well developed research
function to inform council objectives and activity, and the Council
also supports a data observatory linked to the LSP—the Council
and the Observatory have a data led approach which involves being
able to drill down to small area level to aid understanding and
therefore the capacity to develop local policies, develop bids
for resources and ensure that there is good transferability and
use of this understanding across council departments including
planning and the Sustainable Community Strategy (which focuses
on regeneration, skills and education). The Local Strategic Partnership
is strongly linked into the councils economic strategy.
10. In addition, cross boundary rural working
is achieved through the West Yorkshire Rural Partnership, a cross
council collective, with administrative support from four authorities
in West Yorkshire. This has a developing relationship with the
Leeds City Region Team and there is also a West Yorkshire dedicated
RDPE officer funded by Yorkshire Forward.
3. LINCOLNSHIRE—HOLBEACH
FOOD HUB
11. Lincolnshire County Council in partnership
with South Holland District Council have used EU and their own
funds to establish the Holbeach Food Hub in partnership with the
University of Lincoln.
12. The Food Hub is based on a 5 acre serviced
site adjacent to the A17 which is the main distribution route
for agricultural products from Lincolnshire and East Anglia. It
was a down at heel former agricultural college site prior to the
intervention of the authorities, who convinced the emerging University
of Lincoln to retain it as the only site outside of the City and
to develop a food manufacturer centre. It was purpose built to
support the training and development needs of the South Lincolnshire
food cluster.
13. The centre was built in 2 phases at
a total overall cost of approximately £7 million. It contains
training and development facilities, including food packaging
and development equipment of cutting edge standards, which is
used to train the workforce of the food sector and to enable companies
to develop new and innovative products.
14. The centre supports—in an isolated
rural location—the training and development of over 1,000
food processing staff per year. It also provides Higher Education
access for the residents of South Lincolnshire, North Norfolk
and Cambridgeshire in an area which had previously been a Higher
Education "desert" with very low levels of higher educational
attainment. Most interestingly in terms of the food sector which
is often characterized as a low skill sector the centre offers
graduate level training in food science and production. The product
development facilities have been accessed by over 50 local companies
who have been able to use state of the art equipment previously
remote in terms of both distance and their ability to afford access
to it, from them.
15. There is significant pressure for food
related companies to take up the remaining 3 acres of the site
to be adjacent to the centre. The centre is also a nationally
recognized Centre of Vocational Excellence.
16. This is a strong example of local authorities
intervening with a relatively distant Higher Education provider
to ensure that the development needs of their food cluster were
addressed locally and to develop significant additional benefits
through the creation of an Higher Education centre for a remote
rural community. The centre also adjoins the George Farmer Secondary
School and significant linkages between the school and the food
sector have been developed as a consequence of the opportunity
to share facilities.
Local Government Association
June 2008
2 Agriculture in Penwith, Rural Economic Partnership,
Research Report Back
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