Memorandum from Commission for Rural Communities
1. ABOUT THE
COMMISSION FOR
RURAL COMMUNITIES
1.1 The Commission for Rural Communities (CRC)
was established in April 2005 and became an independent body on
1 October 2006, following the enactment of the Natural Environment
and Rural Communities Act, 2006.
1.2 The Commission has the following three roles:
- (1) Listening to and representing the views
of rural communities.
- (2) Giving expert advice.
- (3) Acting as an independent watchdog.
1.3 We have a statutory responsibility to act
as an advocate for rural communities and businesses and provide
independent advice to government and others to help ensure that
policies and programmes reflect the needs of people living, working
and doing business in rural England. We have a particular focus
on tackling disadvantage and economic under-performance.
1.4 Although in June the Secretary of State for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced the abolition of
the CRC as an independent arms length organisation, she also announced
that our work would continue through the formation of new Rural
Communities Policy Unit within Defra. The details of this new
Unit are being developed at the time of writing.
2. SUMMARY OF
KEY POINTS
2.1 The CRC is supportive of many of the principles
surrounding localism and decentralisation of public services.
2.2 The Government needs to ensure that the devolution
of power and responsibility away from central government takes
proper account of, and builds on the strengths and good practice
present in many rural communities, including the network of around
8,000 parish and town councils in England.
2.3 A real commitment to community led planning
should be included within the Government's plans for localism
and decentralisation.
2.4 The Government should make greater use of
Participatory Budgeting as it is proven to make a positive contribution
to many communities, in particular in rural areas.
2.5 When taking forward plans for placed-based
budgeting, the Government should be minded that as rural places
are often governed by geographically large and remote units of
local government, place based budgeting needs to occur at a small
enough special scale to be of relevance and benefit to people
in smaller, more rural communities.
2.6 It is important that public resource allocations
between different places are fair and are seen to be fair. This
is so that, for universal services, all citizens receive broadly
similar services. It is also necessary so that targeted services,
for example to disadvantaged people, reach those targeted people
and groups wherever they live.
2.7 Concerning the Government's plans for the
Revenue Support Grant, the improvement agenda for parish and town
councils should be included in the scope of the purpose for which
top-sliced resources should be used. At present, they receive
no revenue support grant and it is time that central government
supported some of their improvement and development requirements.
2.8 Concerning changes to local performance management,
it is important that any revised process is meaningful to local
people and to local councillors (of all tiers) in the neighbourhoods,
towns and villages where they live (and not just at the level
of administrative delivery bodies).
3. GENERAL COMMENTS
3.1 It is clear that the Government's plans for
localism and decentralisation of public services are not just
about giving power back to local government, but pushing power
downwards and outwards to community level - the Government has
indicated that it wants to make sure people can take control and
responsibility in their local areas and communities.
3.2 Rural communities have traditionally used
many innovative approaches to engaging communities, supported
by high levels of volunteering effort, and there is much evidence
that these efforts produce a wealth of good practice.
3.3 The CRC published its State of the Countryside
report[10]
2010 on 6 July. One of the themes drawn out is the evidence that
rural people are in a strong position to respond positively to
the localism agenda. The data we have gathered and analysed demonstrates
that people living in rural areas are more likely than urban dwellers
to feel that they strongly belong to their neighbourhood. They
are more likely to report that they have been involved in local
decisions (although interestingly around the same proportion of
rural and urban people feel that that they are able to influence
local decisions - below 30%). And people living in rural areas
are more likely to volunteer than those in urban areas - taking
an average across all rural districts, nearly 30% of residents
reported that they had given unpaid voluntary help at least monthly
over the past year.
4. TOWN AND
PARISH COUNCILS
4.1 Community and neighbourhood level power and
influence is central to the Government's ambitions. Strong and
active Parish and Town Councils provide a ready-made route through
which people living in rural communities can work together and
express their views.
4.2 The Government needs to ensure that the devolution
of power and responsibility away from central government takes
proper account of the role of parish and town councils.
4.3 In February 2007 the CRC began a national
inquiry into the role of rural local councillors[11],
and how this role could be strengthened. Our inquiry explored
the opportunities and challenges for rural councillors in bringing
decision-making closer to their communities.
4.4 The aim of the inquiry was to help rural
communities have greater influence over local decisions, by supporting
local councillors to become better democratic champions in acting
on behalf of their communities. We collected evidence from local
authorities and local councillors at all levels; and held over
35 hearings with business groups, local authority officers, local
councillors, voluntary and community groups, formal partnerships
and campaigning organisations.
4.5 Throughout the inquiry, we found much that
is right and healthy in our local democracy in rural England;
with examples of strong local leadership, proactive town and parish
councils, and effective community voices.
4.6 The inquiry made 10 recommendations for action,
which were published at the beginning of 2008. The recommendations
included the need to allocate neighbourhood budgets to local councillors;
supporting parish councils to become fully elected representative
bodies (and addressing the problems caused by the costs of elections);
developing and maintaining strong links and trust between principal
authorities and town and parish councils; and the need for a central
and local government commitment to supporting very local community
plans.
4.7 Alongside
the National Association for Local Councils (NALC), the CRC have
also conducted research and good practice[12]
into service delegations; into the relationships between the parish
sector and principal authorities, particularly unitary authorities
and into parish clustering.
4.8 The government has also announced its intention
to bring in a number of measures to encourage volunteering and
involvement in social action and train a new generation of community
organisers. We need to ensure that these measures build on the
strengths and good practice that are already present in so many
rural communities.
5. COMMUNITY
LED PLANNING
5.1 The CRC would also like to see community
led planning included within the Government's plans for localism
and decentralisation.
5.2 Community Led Planning is a step-by-step
structured process, taken on by local community activists, to
create a vision for a community and an action plan to achieve
it. What makes Community Led Planning distinctive is that, done
well, it involves building the relationship between service providers
and local communities as part of the plan development itself.
Because it is made up of actions to be taken on by local volunteers,
community groups, local government and other service providers,
it produces more impressive results than can be achieved through
a top-down approach to consultation by local government to feed
their own strategic plans. A community led plan challenges local
people to say what part they can play in improving their own local
neighbourhood and builds the capacity of local community groups
to respond. Additional benefits are that the proposed actions
and solutions have already been tested out and are more likely
to be realistic and achievable by all partners working together.[13]
5.3 There are wide spread examples of community-led
planning processes being used to engage whole neighbourhoods in
a discussion about their needs, priorities and ambitions, including
Parish and Village Plans and Market Town Plans. These have been
used to engage local communities on local needs, priorities and
ambitions and much positive action has resulted from this process.
5.4 The CRC, alongside partners in Devon, has
developed a Sustainable Rural Communities Toolkit[14]
to assist in planning policy development. The toolkit is relevant
across a range of spatial levels and highlights the strengths
rural communities can bring to overall planning policy development.
5.5 The Government has announced plans to give
financial incentives to principal authorities to encourage the
creation of local plans which allow development of land for housing
and employment. It is crucial that the local authorities' plans
use community/parish plans as their starting point. There is a
danger otherwise of the needs of rural communities in particular
being overlooked. Alongside this sits the risk that a small group
of residents will find it easier to block affordable housing or
other schemes that the majority of the community have decided
are crucial to maintain a thriving, vibrant community.
5.6 Proposals for the creation of new Local Housing
Trusts also need to ensure mechanisms are developed to enable
communities to take the lead and retain control, but with support
and with some of the bureaucracy carried out by others.
5.7 The CRC would also commend to the committee
the Rural Coalition's recently published report "The rural
challenge. Achieving sustainable rural communities for the 21st
century",[15]
which addresses in more detail many of the above issues.
6. PARTICIPATORY
BUDGETING
6.1 The CRC would also commend
to the committee the positive contribution that Participatory
Budgeting (PB) can make to communities. It is a method by which
local people decide how to allocate part of a public budget, and
it directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending
and priorities for a defined public budget. It can be applied
very flexibly and typically it works with (mainstream) local annual
revenue budgets or supplementary revenue streams or regeneration
budgets.
6.2 PB can create a range
of benefits for local people, including:
- Bringing communities together.
- Encouraging local people to stand for election
as local councillors.
- Helping to raise people's understanding of the
complexities of public budget setting and deciding between competing
priorities.
- Improvements in the way local people and elected
councillors and council officials work together.
- Services being better tailored to local circumstances
(often resulting in improved resident satisfaction).
6.3 PB can also create benefits
for Councils and other service providers, including:
- Better decisions: local decisions based on local
knowledge and needs.
- Helping local people understand the complexities,
compromises and trade-offs involved in local authority decision
making.
- Providing a strong community leadership role
for councillors.
6.4 The CRC, alongside CLG's
Participatory Budgeting Unit, have produced a short report[16]
on PB in rural England, which we commend to the committee.
7. LOCAL GOVERNMENT
STRUCTURES
7.1 In many rural areas four tier systems of
local government exist including county councils, district councils,
parish and town councils; and National Park Authorities, as well
as a multiplicity of Local Strategic Partnerships and other partnerships.
7.2 The issue of the complexity of these structures
was a feature of our participation inquiry. As such one of our
recommendations called for a structure of powerful new unitary
authorities serving their communities, working closely with a
renewed structure of empowered and influential parish and town
councils. We believe that unitary authorities strengthen and clarify
local democracy and local accountability. They should help shire
local government "punch its weight" with more urban
dominated structures such as city regions.
7.3 Whilst the CRC acknowledges the reasoning
behind the halting of local government reorganisation, we also
continue to have uncertainties over the sustainability of the
remaining two-tier structure and there may be a case for the establishment
of virtual unitaries. We view recent examples of shared Directors
and shared Chief Executives between district councils and between
district and county councils as an encouraging development.
8. PLACE-BASED
BUDGETING
8.1 The CRC is supportive of the principle of
place-based approaches to allocating and spending budgets, as
it gives local areas an opportunity to consider and address the
key priorities for specific communities.
8.2 Ultimately, a place based approach may lead
to local authorities having control over entire budgets for areas,
and decisions on allocating such resources may come under a single
management structure.
8.3 In order to tackle specific issues, this
approach may result in budgets being taken away from some organisations/areas
and handed to others.
8.4 As part of this process, it will be important
that rural stakeholders are fully engaged with this process. Furthermore,
those charged with making decisions on the allocation of resources
should ensure that proper consideration is given to the knock
on effects to rural communities that may result from the prioritisation
of particular spending. This will be of particular importance
where direct rural representation at the decision making level
is not present.
8.5 Furthermore, as rural places are often governed
by geographically large and remote units of local government,
place-based budgeting needs to occur at a small enough special
scale to be of relevance and benefit to people in smaller, more
rural communities.
9. RESOURCE ALLOCATION
9.1 It is important that
public resource allocations between different places are fair
and are seen to be fair. This is so that, for universal services,
all citizens receive broadly similar services. It is also necessary
so that targeted services, for example to disadvantaged people,
reach those targeted people and groups wherever they live.
9.2 This is notwithstanding
the fact that local democracy, decision making and choice can
also lead to variations in the levels of some services, as well
as in levels of local taxation. The CRC recognises that there
are often complex trade-offs, both implicit and explicit, involved
in rural service delivery: between access to services, quality
of service, cost of service, cost of accessing the service, local
tax and charging levies, eligibility criteria and so on. Some
services may cost more to deliver in urban areas and some may
cost more to deliver in rural areas. There may also be different
expectations about service delivery, with rural citizens not always
expecting the same levels of service delivery as urban citizens.
9.3 Service providers also
need to continue to be keenly involved in delivering continuous
improvements and efficiencies in service delivery to rural communities.
Alongside fair resource allocations must be placed efficiency,
different ways of service delivering (when appropriate) and also
a commitment to innovation and testing new approaches to service
delivery.
9.4 The CRC has prepared
a position paper[17]
on this subject, which we commend to the committee.
10. REVENUE SUPPORT
GRANT
10.1 The CRC welcomed CLG's recent consultation
on revenue support grant top-slice for improvement services to
local authorities. The CRC generally supports the principles outlined
and agrees that a single specified body should be the recipient
of all top-sliced funding, and that it should decide how best
to use this funding to deliver objectives and outcomes agreed
with the CLG Secretary of State.
10.2 The main additional point that we recommended
to the Department was that the improvement agenda for parish and
town councils be included in the scope of the purposes for which
top-sliced resources should be used for. This reform would provide
a more equitable deployment of "top sliced" Government
funding for improvement and development in local government. At
present none of this resource is spent in support of the parish
and town council sector of local government. There are about 8,000
parish and town councils in England, most of them in shire and
rural England, and they are served by over 80,000 councillors.
They receive no revenue support grant and are therefore the most
financially locally accountable tier of local government. It is
time that central government supported some of their improvement
and development requirements. If the Government is minded to accept
this proposal then suitable objectives (including delivery of
the objectives of the National Training Strategy for parish and
town councils[18]),
should be agreed between CLG and the LGA and the National Association
of Local Councils (representing parish and town councils).
11. LOCAL PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
11.1 The CRC notes that the Local Government
Group has recently consulted on proposals for self improvement
for councils following the abolition of the Comprehensive Area
Assessment (CAA) regime.
11.2 Our rural commentary on the first CAA reports[19]
contains much that we feel is relevant to their proposals.
11.3 This short commentary on the value of the
CAA regime to rural people shows a positive picture. Many rural
communities are well served by their local authorities and other
local public service providers. There are a significant number
of excellent practice case examples that can now be taken up by
others. And rural circumstances and needs were often recognised
in the CAA reports.
11.4 However, the report also highlighted that
there was room for improvement, both in the CAA process and in
the delivery of rural public services. It highlighted:
- That the extent to which CAAs picked up on rurality
was not systematic.
- That the CAA reports were at too high a level
to be meaningful to most people and reporting of performance against
the National Indicator Set (NIS) did not expose local rural and
other differences in service standards and delivery.
- It was unclear how the views of local people
had informed the assessments.
- Whether equitable service delivery across different
geographies was being achieved was difficult to judge from the
CAA reports.
11.5 The CRC discussed this paper with Local
Government Group in spring 2010 where we emphasized that in future
there would be value in the following:
- Recognition of rural circumstances and needs
by local service providers at the local level. And a recognition
that tackling geographical inequalities is an important role and
challenge for public service delivery bodies.
- Collecting and promoting good practice solutions
on addressing the challenges of public service delivery to dispersed
communities.
- Introducing performance management and local
spending information that is meaningful to local people and to
local councillors (of all tiers) in the neighbourhoods, towns
and villages where they live (and not just at the level of administrative
delivery bodies).
12. EXAMPLES
OF DECENTRALISED
PUBLIC SERVICE
DELIVERY
12.1 The CRC would like into highlight a number
of examples of decentralised public service delivery in rural
areas:
- Residents in Brandon, Suffolk, have limited access
to health and social care services, with many located 10 miles
from Brandon. Via it's Connected Care programme,[20]
Turning Point, a health and social care organisation, is training
local community researchers to engage with local people to establish
various services in the town, and identify what meets local needs
and where gaps in provision exist.
- The Bay Broadband Co-operative provides broadband
to the residents and visitors of Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire.
Remote villages and farms enjoy a reliable and high quality broadband
connection through a wifi mesh of up to eight megabits. Members
pay £8 a month for the service and visitors to the area also
can purchase a temporary connection to the system for between
£3 a day to £10 a week. The co-operative survives on
its income and is currently making a sustainable profit.
- Burgess Hill Town
Council, in West Sussex, delivers a range of county and district
services through its Mobile Maintenance Teams, who are also contracted
to service three smaller neighbouring parishes.
13. CONCLUSION
13.1 The CRC asks the Committee
to consider:
- (i) How the devolution of power and responsibility
away from central government will take account of the strengths
and good practice present in many rural communities.
- (ii) Examine the Government's commitment
to community led planning and its inclusion within the Government's
plans for localism and decentralisation.
- (iii) Recommending to the Government the
positive contribution that Participatory Budgeting can make to
many communities.
- (iv) The fact that rural places are often
governed by geographically large and remote units of local government
and that place-based budgeting needs to occur at a small enough
special scale to be of relevance and benefit to people in smaller
communities.
- (v) The importance that public resource allocations
between different places are fair and are seen to be fair.
- (vi) The possibility of including parish
and town councils within the scope of plans to revise the Revenue
Support Grant.
- (vii) The importance that revised processes
for performance management at the local level are meaningful to
local people and to local councillors (of all tiers) in the neighbourhoods,
towns and villages where they live (and not just at the level
of administrative delivery bodies).
13.2 The CRC commends this submission to the
CLG Committee inquiry into Localism and hopes that it provides
helpful assistance to informing the Government's thinking on Localism
and Decentralisation.
October 2010
10 State of the Countryside 2010 http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/sotc/sotc2010.pdf
Back
11
Participation Inquiry http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/strengthening-the-role-of-local-councillors/ Back
12
Continuing Effective Engagement
http://www.nalc.gov.uk/Document/Download.aspx?uid=a5e755f2-ab14-48cc-9024-1a3f45503f75 Back
13
Community Led Planning http://www.acre.org.uk/communityengagement_parishplans.html
Back
14
Sustainable Rural Communities Toolkit http://www.ruraltoolkit.org.uk/ Back
15
Rural Coalition report http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/RuralCoalitionWEB_MH.pdf
Back
16
Participatory Budgeting in Rural England http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/experienceofparticipatorybudgeting.pdf
Back
17
Resource allocation position paper http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/positionstatement.pdf
Back
18
National Training Strategy for Town and Parish Councils http://www.nalc.gov.uk/Training/Training.aspx
Back
19
CAA commentary http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/2010/06/24/caa/ Back
20
Connected Care http://www.turning-point.co.uk/commissionerszone/centreofexcellence/Pages/ConnectedCare.aspx Back
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