Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Regional Development Agencies
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 This paper includes additional evidence
submitted by England's RDAs to the refocused brief of the Environment,
Food & Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee. The nine Regional
Development Agencies (RDAs), established in 1999, have a common
mission: to transform England's regions through sustainable economic
development. They led the creation of Regional Economic Strategies
(RESs), which are developed in partnership with, and owned by,
a wide range of stakeholders across each region. RDAs are the
leaders of rural economic delivery at the regional level.
1.2 RDAs will continue to deliver results
which could be considered as contributing to this Departmental
Strategic Objective (DSO) as we are committed to creating sustainable
economic development which improves circumstances in all areas
of England, whether urban or rural. RDAs are and will be delivering
against the Government's PSA 7 (Improve the economic performance
of all English regions and reduce the gap in economic growth rates
between regions) which aims "to raise the rate of sustainable
growth and achieve rising prosperity and a better quality of life,
with economic and employment opportunities for all".
1.3 With regard to the RDAs' key PSA we
use mainly mainstream interventions to deliver outcomes in rural
areas; ensuring that rural areas benefit from RDAs' core business
support, skills, regeneration, economic development and sustainable
development activity. Annually around a third of all RDA outputs
have been delivered in rural areas. In addition to this, RDAs
are now delivering 20% of the funding available through the Rural
Development Programme for England (RDPE) which will deliver socio-economic
benefits in rural areas within a tightly prescribed European framework.
1.3 The RDAs have addressed the request
for additional evidence in the form of two short sections, one
on the DSO itself, and the other on the potential delivery architecture.
2. THE DEPARTMENTAL
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE
2.1 It would be helpful if the DSO was accompanied
by a definition of a strong rural community. RDAs are developing
the regional evidence base that is starting to show that the needs
of rural communities, and the way they function, vary according
to location and other factors. The definition of the strong rural
community does need to consider sustainability of that community
and the ability of appropriate development to support future community
sustainability.
2.2 The economic outcome should seek to
support economic growth across wider rural areas. Targeting at
areas of lowest levels of performance potentially ignores the
complexities of the rural economies, and in addition, their potential.
For instance the indicator selected does not factor in the higher
levels of self employment and entrepreneurship found in rural
areas.
3. DSO DELIVERY
ARCHITECTURE
3.1 The DSO hasn't been explicitly discussed
with RDAs and we haven't had sight of a delivery plan for this
DSO, so it is a little difficult to comment on the delivery architecture
which has been put in place. We hope that delivery of the DSO
will recognise RDAs' regional strategic leadership of rural economic
development and that plans for delivery, when developed, will
align with regional and sub-regional economic development architecture.
3.2 The single pot approach, by which RDAs
are funded, has allowed the RDAs greater flexibility in delivering
integrated and innovative solutions to meet the regionally specific
objectives set out in each RES. The RDAs are learning from the
success of this model in taking a mainstream approach to rural
policy. Through this approach rural areas can meet their needs
and make the most of their opportunities by appropriating support
from all programmes, rather than a limited number of specially
created rural schemes. The RDAs believe that specific rural interventions
should only be developed where market failure cannot be addressed
by mainstream provision. In taking this approach, however, there
is obviously a need to ensure that mainstream policy is effectively
rural proofed.
3.3 RDAs have been promoting the mainstream
approach to Defra for a number of years and we are therefore very
pleased that this approach has been built into the "strong
rural communities" DSO. Whilst we appreciate, however, that
Defra's decision to restructure and focus on their two PSAs (effectively
reducing their explicit commitment to rural affairs within their
agenda and reducing their rural team resources by half) has been
made in the context of mainstreaming, we are concerned that this
action is not concurrent with effective cross government rural
proofing, and therefore there is still a substantive gap in the
explicit rural proofing coverage of key Whitehall departments.
The CRC report on Rural Proofing 2007 (Monitoring Rural Proofing
2007) specifically states that "Our evidence shows that
the commitment ("to rural-proof policy") is not being
delivered consistently or systematically across departments or
policy areas". We believe, therefore that Defra still has
a key role in influencing mainstream delivery to effectively deliver
against those needs. This is not only vital at national government
level per se, but it also provides the underpinning policy
framework support needed to ensure that Government's sub-national
partners can provide adequate and appropriate support to rural
areas.
3.4 There remains a need for Defra to ensure
the ongoing commitment to gathering suitable evidence that defines
the needs of rural people/communities and influencing other Departments
to gather consistent appropriate evidence. For example, Advantage
West Midlands' Access to Services study highlighted that
there is a vast amount of evidence available, but it is not comparable
across Local Authorities. This lack of comparable data prevents
aggregation to regional and national levels, therefore reducing
the ability to identify the real issues in a way that can be effectively
factored in to mainstream regional and national policies.
3.5 In terms of monitoring outcomes from
the DSO, the RDAs report through a single performance framework
to government and are keen to emphasise that there should be no
additional feedback loops to report separately to Defra on activity
which might contribute to this DSO. In the past there have been
a number of duplicated requests which have caused confusion and
had considerable resource implications.
March 2008
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