Environment Audit CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE)
Summary
This submission has been informed by ACRE’s members in the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN). As part of our unique agreement with Defra’s Rural Communities Policy Unit, we supply the Department with intelligence about rural communities on its priority policy themes that include transport and services.
Meeting the Government’s transport policy objectives creates significantly greater challenges for rural communities. The situation has been made worse by increasing public and private service withdrawal and centralisation during recession and austerity and the impacts have been greater for rural communities.
Transport in rural areas is inextricably linked with most other issues affecting communities living there. The availability of services and jobs in neighbouring towns is worthless without access to appropriate forms of transport to the right place at the right time and it is incorrect to assume that rural residents are well off economically or have access to their own private transport.
ACRE has identified many examples of uncoordinated approaches to access to public health services from across the country and believes that policies in health do not account properly for the essential need for transport in rural areas. We believe that there is a strong requirement for more joint working to meet these needs.
Although “accessibility” can feature strongly as headlines in local authority accessibility planning but this does not always translate into effective delivery. There is often little local community input into these plans and consequently they do not meet their objectives.
Service reduction and loss provides opportunities to assess accurately what rural communities need in respect of requirements for transport and access to public services. Many rural communities are working alongside the third sector, including our members, local authorities and delivery bodies to provide for rural communities needs.
Community transport has always had a critical role to play in enabling access to services. The sector’s growth needs to be encouraged and supported in that it can help fill the gaps in delivery and provide sustainable and targeted services going forward.
There are several possible approaches that could be taken to measuring public service accessibility but we regard journey time and user costs as fundamental to the debate.
Improved broadband can be a significant benefit to reducing needs for transport infrastructure but good broadband speeds are required, which are far from the norm in many rural areas. However the impact of broadband will not mitigate the need for a decent public transport infrastructure to support access to specific types of services and opportunities for social interaction.
Overall there is insufficient understanding and attention paid to meeting the access needs for rural communities to public services. This leads to an inequitable situation that must be addressed.
How are the Government’s current transport policies affecting the accessibility of public services (ie whether people get to key services at reasonable cost, in reasonable time and with reasonable ease)?
1. Meeting the Government’s transport policy objectives creates significantly greater challenges in rural areas where rurality impacts upon effective delivery of transport and public services for communities. In the main this is due to geographical remoteness from centres of service delivery and an older population in comparison to urban areas. The challenge for many people living in rural areas especially for those who are more deprived, is to obtain the services they need within the constraints of their personal transport options be they private, public or community.
2. This inherent situation for rural communities is compounded by increasing public and private service withdrawal and centralisation caused by recession and austerity. Indeed the need to reduce costs in recent years has meant progressive service and transport losses to rural communities—many of which are viewed by local people as essential to their everyday needs including buses, banks and food retailers.
3. Cuts in services have a disproportionate effect on rural communities. People in rural areas travel more miles compared to the population overall and small communities cannot support the range of jobs and services that an urban population enjoys. Research also shows that, on average, people on lower incomes in rural areas pay a higher proportion of their income on travel costs. If they are able to drive and public transport during times they need is not available, they have no choice but to buy a car in order to travel for essential journeys.
4. Funding cuts and subsequent gaps in services create many challenges for government, public service providers and rural communities and require them to get to grips with a new landscape on the ground. It is likely that as we go forward more evidence will emerge on the impact of funding cuts and approaches necessary to address these might become more apparent. However there are already many examples of activity to mitigate the challenges some of which we outline later in our submission.
5. Significantly in a period of public sector contraction, planning for replacement is not seemingly a priority issue nor have we seen widespread and effective rural proofing and accessibility planning to the benefit of rural communities so far. The constrained situation is particularly detrimental for certain groups of people affected most by service withdrawal, notably those without access to their own transport. This includes many older and young people and those with mobility problems.
6. It is also apparent from evidence across the country that if community groups were not taking on the challenge of running certain services for themselves such as libraries, swimming pools etc then current local authority decisions would be impacting to a greater degree on access as the choices available would be located even further afield.
7. Thus the picture in rural areas is one of steady decline in the availability of local services, which has become worse for people without access to private modes of transport because of the reduction in public transport options, notably cuts to subsidised bus routes.
8. In respect of the reduction in subsidised bus services, we are unaware of any guidance given by Government on what local transport authorities should be doing. The recent community transport funding by Government such as the Rural Sustainable Community Transport Initiative (RSCTI) which provided £10 million to 76 local authorities in 2011–12 and 2012–13 to support and develop community transport in rural areas, are welcomed and has helped the community transport sector to address access to essential services. For example in Wiltshire it is being used to run a business growth service for existing community transport groups, fund the expansion of existing and new schemes and run a community transport social enterprise.
9. However the RSCTI and Local Sustainable Transport Fund have not compensated for the services lost and in the case of the former, local authorities are not using it for community transport in all cases. We believe that longer terms funding is needed to help develop the community transport sector and make it more sustainable.
10. Community transport has always had a critical role to play in rural delivery and enabling access to services. However certain areas are better served than others and thus providers are able to take up delivery opportunities afforded by public service reductions. The sector is capable of providing much of the transport in a local area, though this needs to be done in partnership with the local transport providers, for example private hire operators, taxi firms or bus operators.
11. In terms of the context in which the community transport sector operates, the Transport Act 2008 has had some liberating effects such as enabling groups to operate smaller vehicles more suitable to rural areas but some aspects remain unclear for example around the right of operators to include their income costs within their charges to customers. The industry body, the Community Transport Association, is seeking resolution on this and other matters as we understand.
12. Service losses also give the opportunity to assess accurately what current rural residents need, and provides a solution which is flexible enough to meet these, something Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) members do very well through their direct work with communities and support for and provision of transport initiatives.
13. RCAN and local transport providers have worked in partnership for many years to develop tried and tested solutions for individual communities, including demand responsive buses, community mini-buses, car-based taxis, good neighbour schemes and even community rail partnerships. Transport in rural areas is inextricably linked with most of the other issues affecting rural communities. The availability of services and jobs in neighbouring towns is worthless to rural residents without access to appropriate forms of transport to the right place at the right time. Traditional public transport solutions, even community minibus schemes, are not always viable. Innovation in transport means moving to solutions that more closely match individual needs. RCAN members across the country work with Rural Transport Partnerships, where they exist, and where they don’t; they take on the challenge of working with other stakeholders to maintain the focus on rural transport needs and solutions. For example in places like the rural parts of the Isle of Wight (which is fairly typical of other rural areas with low population levels and a high proportion of older people) maintaining effective bus services is difficult. Hence the Island has developed a recent ambitious hybrid scheme with volunteer drivers using private sector buses and subsidised by the local authority.
14. In the private sector, many rural shops, garages and pubs have diversified to try to sustain their business. However, both short term impacts of the recession and longer term decreases in viability have meant further losses of retail and other outlets that have traditionally been a cornerstone of rural life. For those without their own transport, it can make the difference between being able to stay in their village and having to move to a town.
15. Some public service providers have improved rural access through better integration between agencies, mobile provision or use of new technologies. We believe that it is essential to foster dialogue between communities and service providers because local effort can often contribute to efficiency and effectiveness. Local communities can provide facilities, form good neighbour and community transport schemes and advice points to ensure the hard to reach in rural communities are not excluded because of where they live.
16. Through supporting new kinds of community entrepreneurship and dialogue with service providers, the Rural Community Action Network can help local emergence of, for instance, local community-owned shops and service hubs in community-owned premises. These initiatives build on the strengths of rural communities and help re-localise service provision. In this way, we can build the sustainable rural communities we need for the future.
17. In support of the above analysis, we have used several examples both reflecting the impacts on the current challenges in rural areas and the solutions available. This has come through ACRE’s relationship with its members, which we provide under our agreement with Defra to help it rural proof policy and deliver equity between rural and urban communities.
18. The changes made to route registrations which allowed for “demand responsive” registered routes was a positive move improving the potential for public transport in rural areas, in particular. It allows flexibility for transport providers to modify their routes or not to run if there no passengers. This is important in sparsely populated areas to make the provision of transport cost effective. However, benefits were constrained following the review of the operation of the concessionary fare scheme and the repayment of fares where the seats were pre-booked became discretionary. This made the setting up of rural demand responsive bus services unattractive for the local authorities.
19. Our member in Wiltshire, Community First, operates a good neighbour service that provides information and signposting to support older and vulnerable people to live independently in their own homes. It sees a significant number of clients facing issues getting the transport they require. Last year out of 1790 enquiries it received, 230 or 13% were related to transport while a further 13% related to social isolation and an inability to access social groups or contact as a result of transport issues. Anecdotally, many of its clients are unable to access public transport due to mobility issues or the complexity of the public transport routes involved (for example three buses, a 10 minute walk and a total of one and a half hours to go 20 miles to a hospital appointment) and frequently use taxis. This in turn has a negative financial implication for these people as they have no alternative.
20. A further problem is the English concessionary bus pass scheme which has insufficient funds to achieve what is required locally. The rate of reimbursement to operators depends entirely on each local authority, and (as the money is not ring fenced), is subject to the political whim of elected members. In Cumbria the re-imbursement is only 58% of the fares meaning that a small (or voluntary) operator, with a minibus, will lose money. In Humber and Wolds there are services with reasonable passenger numbers incapable of covering operating costs because these passengers are all pass holders. There are extra pressures in those areas (many of which are rural) which attract large numbers of holiday makers—many of whom have a bus pass—as the boarding authority pays for the reimbursement of their fare. Several pensioner groups have suggested they pay a flat rate contribution towards their fare but this is deemed illegal by the Department for Transport. Local councillors in Humber and Wolds will shortly be meeting with some of the MPs for the East Riding to ask that local authorities are given the power to raise revenue by charging a flat rate levy per journey. This would also reduce the inequality between rural and urban, as rural journeys tend to be longer. If this is granted local authority members would then have to decide whether to go down this route or not.
21. A number of our members in the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) are engaged in surveying local areas to identify gaps in services such as for childcare, health facilities and transport. These surveys are being undertaken at regular intervals and longitudinal comparisons are being made, the results, being fed into local (authority) planning processes to help improve access to services for these areas.
22. Many Rural Community Action Network members also provide specialist advice to communities faced with access to services problems and work to provide tailored solutions. This includes commissioning or providing appropriate services and, where a transport solution is not possible or appropriate, working with providers and communities to help deliver a service in different ways.
Are other policies (such as planning, education, health, welfare and work etc) adversely affecting the accessibility of public services and the environment? Do decisions on the location of public services adequately reflect available public transport infrastructure and the environmental footprint of the transport needed to access them? How significant are any adverse impacts for accessibility and the environment?
23. Planning for accessibility is the key aspect underlying these questions. In general the accessibility of alternative sites when services are reduced or closed does not appear to be a strong factor in the decision whether to keep a service outlet open or not. There is an increasing movement to re-build hospitals, colleges and office space on Greenfield sites without considering the costs to the users of access, by car, public transport or cycling.
24. Whilst public transport appears to be supported fairly well by planning gain, it is less clear that community transport fares so well.
25. We believe that Government should examine whether service providers should produce an accessibility plan that assesses their client group’s access needs. This would include people requiring health, education and welfare services. This should ideally be data driven so if all clients have their own car or are within walking distance then ensuring alternative suitable transport is not an issue. However if people do not have suitable available transport then the plan should detail how they could access the service (including outreach support, community led transport, public transport).
26. Our evidence shows that the most critical single issue within this series of questions relates to transport for health related appointments. ACRE has picked up many examples of uncoordinated approaches in heath authority areas to this subject and believes that policies in health do not take into account the significant need for transport in rural areas. We have also supplied evidence to support Defra’s Rural Health Proofing Toolkit about transport needs that is being published at the end of September and will be developing a rural health profile for all Clinical Commissioning Group and local authority health areas at the same time.
27. We believe that there is a strong need for joint working to meet the access needs of health services that are no longer locally placed. We have included the following examples supplied from our Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) members that illustrate the issues raised.
28. Rural communities broadly accept that there will be fewer specialist hospitals to achieve economies of scale (and have always expected to travel greater distances for specialist treatment). However, as this increasingly applies to general hospitals, it is important that their locations are carefully planned and supported by necessary infrastructure. We have already heard of health journeys of more than 100 miles (one way) for tests and operations. While access to cities is generally reasonable from most places; if lack of space moves these services to larger sites in the middle of nowhere, access by public transport is often non-existent.
29. The “Transport Assessment” report prepared by Cheshire West and Chester Link in 2010 found that almost 80% of older people perceived transport as the major barrier to accessing healthcare services. During the previous 12 month period 17% of older people had missed an appointment or treatment session due to transport difficulties. Taking the population as a whole the figure was even higher at 20%. This represents a highly significant cost and major logistical problem for health authorities being that a similar situation is replicated nationally.
30. We were also made aware of a lack of joined up working between patient transport services (PTS) and public transport providers and how PTS apply the eligibility criteria to qualify for their service. This results in inconsistencies in access to hospital services for rural areas. A simple scheduling of appointments for rural residents to avoid early and late slots would improve the patient experience and allow more choices of how to get from home to hospital. There have been moves to integrate PTS and other home to hospital transport services including work to influence the health commissioners to this end.
31. Financial support for community transport is not considered by health authorities, yet in many cases nearly 90% of all volunteer car scheme journeys are carried out for health related purposes.
32. Wiltshire operates social car or schemes run entirely by volunteers, offering transport and support around the home and garden. Our member undertakes an annual audit of activity undertaken by these groups which show trends in the transport needs of the older and vulnerable residents of Wiltshire. The background of bus service cuts have had a significant negative impact on these local car groups who have all reported an increased pressure on their services as demand has increased. The demand has primarily been (but not exclusively) in the area of health related transport where there has been a 19% increase in transport provided to healthcare facilities over the last four years. Within the last six months, the three providers of the ambulance car service serving the Wiltshire area have tightened their patient criteria making it more difficult for clients to access their services. Many of these clients asked to use local car schemes for transport instead but due to the complexity of their medical needs were unable to be helped by that service.
33. There has been recent interest from Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) in ensuring access to surgeries by DRT and voluntary car schemes, which might be a good future policy direction since missed or delayed appointments (due to a patient saving up issues or waiting too long to seek help) has a significant cost implication to the CCG.
34. For health transport to work more effectively some small scale interventions could make a real difference such as coordinating appointment times to fit with transport services, modest direct financial assistance to help with things like resourcing coordinators of volunteer drivers and designated parking and assistance to help passengers to treatment areas.
35. In the Isle of Wight, local plans have identified rural service hubs. Whilst of some value locally they mean nothing for people who have no public transport between outlying villages and the hubs. And given that most routes focus on getting people to and from the main population centres this is often the case. Again a problem of not thinking the whole issue through and possible inadequate consultation with affected communities.
36. Cycling and walking is promoted nationally but is not an option from and within many rural areas including to access work or training. However, moped loan schemes known by many as “Wheels to Work” are far less damaging to the environment than using cars. However, funding shortages mean that the availability of mopeds in many cases cannot meet current demand and a number of schemes are struggling financially and may have to fold.
Is the Government’s current approach of requiring the accessibility of public services to be reflected in local transport plans working? How effective is the Department for Transport in furthering the accessibility agenda?
37. Several of our members indicated that although “accessibility” and some “accessibility plans” can feature highly as headlines within local authority strategies, this is often lip service and there is often little local input into them from the local community and consequently they are flawed evidentially and lack community ownership. In Cumbria the County Council did nothing to bring the communities and the professional transport providers together. If the County had followed the guidelines as drawn up by the Department for Transport, then there might have been some movement, but at the moment the current approach is not working.
38. Some transport surveys do not have good reach and are targeted at the existing transport users so the gaps in transport are never identified and there needs to be better and more community engagement on transport planning and provision.
39. Consistency of service is also an issue. Currently there may be community transport schemes in an area but they do not necessarily provide the type of service required. For example many do not provide wheelchair space or cannot wait at hospitals. Therefore in some cases there is a need to develop and support these schemes, which is an activity many RCAN members specialise in alongside the necessary development to encourage a community to begin a scheme. Norfolk and other counties have recently developed a community transport association to represent emerging schemes.
40. There is a perception from some of our members is that the latest iteration of local transport plans has had limited impact with other service providers and main focus is on improving demand responsive transport (DRT) in rural areas. The DRT shift is positive but only impacts one aspect of accessibility. Local transport plans are only as good as the funds available to carry out the work. They are predominantly aspirational only, for example improving travel plans cannot be met unless there is good public transport to support them and as this submission has shown rural areas always tend to suffer from a lack of good public transport.
41. There is a further related issue that volunteers are increasingly resistant to additional red tape, health checks, CRB checks etc.
42. With regard to the current requirements for the accessibility of public services to be reflected in local transport plans, ACRE and RCAN Rural Evidence resources specifically its local access to services reports www.rural-evidence.org.uk provides a range of meaningful information such as the number of no car households living more than 60 minutes from a local hospital by public transport. Current measurements of the transport-related accessibility of public services do not consider whether “rural” deprivation is different from “urban” deprivation.
43. This research uses standard national datasets that apply in both rural and urban areas. The headline finding is that rural areas are substantially more deprived based on the location of deprived people than based on the location of deprived areas. To illustrate this point in Wiltshire, none of the three highly deprived Local Super Output Areas in Wiltshire are rural but:
35% of households with no car or van live in rural areas.
34% of no car households living 60 or more minutes from a hospital by public transport are in rural areas.
100% of households in Wiltshire more than 6km from a principal GP site are in rural areas.
48% of households in Wiltshire 60 or more minutes from a Further Education institution by public transport are in rural areas.
44. On this question we also received detailed intelligence from our member in Tees Valley, Tees Valley RCC. It has summarised the approach to rural transport planning being taken by the five local authorities in its area. Each is concerned with connectivity and access between the different boroughs supporting access to services for some rural areas but still a mixed picture emerges.
45. In Darlington access to essential services is embedded in its local transport plan. The lack of public transport in remote locations is seen as “a major barrier to accessing increasingly limited employment opportunities” and other essential services. Recent cutbacks to public transport services—with more to come at the end of 2012–13—have meant little has been done to alleviate the growing problems in rural areas. However, the Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) and Rural Sustainable Community Transport Initiative (RSCTI) funding has resulted in schemes to improve inter-urban access between Newton Ayecliffe in County Durham and Darlington, and the development of a rural villages scheduled minibus scheme which could be replicated in other rural villages around the town. Darlington is now more positively engaged with the community transport sector than for a number of years, which our member believes augurs well for the future.
46. Hartlepool has a key strategic objective to improve equality of opportunity through access to services. The authority is currently examining the potential of developing a travel club (demand-responsive) service to replace its former dial a ride service, which is being supported by RSCTI funds.
47. Middlesbrough has little in the way of rural areas but does consider that the “availability of public transport in remote locations is particularly limiting job opportunities for those who do not have access to a car.” Recent success in securing LSTF funding has led the Council to look at developing a demand-responsive model to improve access to services, particularly from isolated areas of the borough. However tellingly public transport services in Middlesbrough are good as it serves a largely urban population.
48. Stockton on Tees transport plan has strong accessibility and connectivity goals and a robust in-house community transport facility—the only one in the Tees Valley. It has four area transport strategies, covering different areas of the borough, but as they all include largely urban populations and the rural areas have no distinctive voice. Our member believes that a separate rural area transport strategy would be beneficial.
49. Redcar & Cleveland has the largest rural area, geographically and in terms of population, in the Tees Valley. It deals with rural transport and access to services issues in some detail. It has worked well, through its Integrated Transport Unit, with the community transport sector—supporting the development of rural transport initiatives, and in one case donating a minibus to a small CT operator in East Cleveland. The council is perhaps most actively involved of all the Tees Valley local authorities with the Tees Valley CT Forum which is facilitated by TVRCC and works towards developing transport schemes and services for the rural areas of the sub-region. Following the recent public transport cutbacks and withdrawal of its dial a ride service, the council established a Link service to connect a number of isolated rural villages with the borough’s towns and provided funding for small-scale community transport based demand-responsive projects. These measures do, in a small way, help to reduce the impact of transport cuts.
50. Finally there are a few quirks in respect of accessibility that we have identified that should be addressed by the respective local authorities cited. For example Oxfordshire has a high percentage of low floor buses, but very few of them are accessible in rural villages owing to uneven ground, routes and timetabling. There is a similar situation in Norfolk where the target is for disabled friendly bus stops but no target to ensure that the bus stop location itself is accessible. This might mean you find a level bus stop located 300 metres along a grass verge from the nearest house.
How should the transport-related accessibility of public services be measured? How can decision-making in government better reflect “social” and accessibility impacts, alongside environmental and other considerations? Do social and accessibility concerns conflict with environmental considerations? Would a measure of the transport accessibility of key public services, in a similar manner as “fuel poverty”, be useful for policy-making (and if so, how should it be defined?)
51. All public services should be accessible by a transport scheme which does not rely on “good will” or “charity”. A supported (or subsidised) transport service allows other services to be sustainable. A single vehicle can carry people to use several services, for example to hospital, the shops and the dentist. In rural areas, the requirement is not necessarily to have a vehicle visiting these services every hour or even every day, but there is a need for it to run regularly and reliably. It also should not wander around the countryside trying to take in every village in one trip, making a journey twice as long as it would be in a car.
52. There are several possible approaches that could be taken to measuring accessibility. It is important to make clear that it not appropriate to measure accessibility in terms of distance as might be considered a logical approach. Journey time and financial cost are better measures of inaccessibility for rural communities. This view is illustrated with evidence from the Isle of Wight showing that the costs of public buses are widely regarded as prohibitively expensive for one off trips and the minimum charge of £2.50 levied on all journeys even if it one stop is a significant disincentive for taking short trips for example to the GP. Furthermore in an effort to make routes profitable, the route taken is often circuitous meaning that the journey time might be up to 50% longer than a more direct journey. In Surrey the cost of transport is still an issue for example from Cranleigh town to Guildford there is a £4 one way charge for an adult to use the Job Club.
53. It is also possible that one of the elements to include in accessibility measurement is the number of transport options available. If a community or individual only has one transport option available to them in terms of accessing a certain service then they are more disadvantaged than someone who has two or more options. For example for those people reliant on public transport, there is clearly both a quantitative and qualitative difference between having one bus a day at 9.30am returning at 12.30pm, compared with an hourly service between 7.00am and 10.00pm. It might be feasible to reflect this type of differential within workable indicators and definitions.
54. An accessibility index—perhaps along the lines of fuel poverty assessment might also be of value for identifying the travel needs of residents currently living in rural isolation. It could use existing accessibility data such as that held by ACRE and RCAN as part our Rural Evidence assessments—more information at http://www.rural-evidence.org.uk
55. A measure of the transport accessibility of key public services would be useful. It would allow a community to know what to expect and to be able to argue for improvement if the measure is not achieved. The service need to include recreational activities, especially for teenage children, who, at the moment, have to depend on their parents. Rural children do not have the freedom that urban children have to try different sports or attend out of hours school activities for example.
56. Post 16 transport funding provides a significant issue particularly given the emphasis on providing a wider range of options for that age groups education. It also provides a good illustration of the challenges for a student travelling from a rural area. Normally the service is provided free of charge for entitled students. However, if a pupil wishes to continue into the sixth form, they must pay a fare to travel. This particularly disadvantages those living in rural areas, and has the unintended consequence of increasing the number of cars on the road, and the number of young drivers.
57. The withdrawal of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (some of which students used on transport costs) again disadvantages those living further from the school/college they need to access. Furthermore there are colleges out of reach for rural populations because there are no practical ways to get there using public transport (ie no viable bus or train routes) which limits choice and opportunity. It also causes issues of reduced attendance as students will opt to stay at home rather travel for three hours for a two hour session.
58. In respect of work, many of the jobs available to the more deprived communities in rural areas are located at distribution centres on business parks and industrial sites. These sites are rarely near residential areas and so are poorly served by public transport, if at all. Many jobseekers wanting to apply for these jobs have no access to private vehicles and so without adequate public transport the local potential workforce is disadvantaged. Using the example of Derbyshire and other providers Wheels to Work schemes help people access work at these locations.
The impact of broadband networks and the Internet in mitigating the need for transport infrastructure to access public services
59. Improved broadband can be a significant benefit to reducing need for transport infrastructure but fast broadband speeds are required, which are far from the norm in all rural areas. High speed broadband would have many direct benefits including supporting small rural-based businesses and those able to work from home leading to a reduction in needs for personal travel and consequent environmental benefits. Amongst other potential advantages are increased use of telemedicine and connecting people, including the young and disadvantaged, to work, volunteering and advice services.
60. However the impact of broadband will not mitigate the need for a decent public transport infrastructure. You cannot play sports, attend college or visit hospital over the internet. It is the view of our one of our members that public service websites in their area give false information because they do not take into account the geography of the area.
61. However it is also vital to recognise the social interaction is fundamentally important to most people’s well-being. Many older or more deprived residents in rural communities do not have access to a computer and so still need transport to access public services. It is also widely evidenced that social isolation can lead to depression and mental illness, so the importance of retaining effective transport infrastructure and local service provision remains essential and we would not wish to exacerbate social isolation, a situation that as we have stated is a challenge to address for many rural communities.
ACRE and the Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) promote activities that deliver and help sustain services for rural areas, including those developed by local communities themselves. This is particularly relevant in challenging economic times, where services in rural communities can be hit hardest with outlets such as shops and pubs being at risk or forced to close. Services such as post offices, healthcare and leisure activities are the basis of any community and create and enhance a feeling of belonging and a sustainable future for an area and can be particularly important to a rural area.
Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) is the national umbrella body for the Rural Community Action Network, providing focus for national advocacy and support for its member organisations and the rural communities they serve. ACRE works strategically with government and with a range of national third sector organisations to reflect a rural perspective in policy and practice. ACRE is nationally recognised for its expertise in ensuring rural community-led solutions are central to public policy debate and manages the delivery of programmes that directly benefit grass roots communities.
The Rural Community Action Network (RCAN) covers the whole of rural England through the work of 38 local member organisations and ACRE. The local member organisations are all independent charities, largely county-based. As local development agencies, RCAN members have been facilitating social change in rural communities for decades by providing tailored and comprehensive support to rural communities to enhance their quality of life and access to services. With a strong focus on local advocacy and brokering relationships between rural community aspirations and local government strategies, RCAN members enhance the role of community action and self-reliance in rural areas across the country.
7 September 2012