Rural Development

Rural White Paper: Our Countryside: The Future - A Fair Deal for Rural England - Summary

Foreword

by Rt Hon John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and Rt Hon Nick Brown, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

How we live our lives is shaped by where we live our lives. But wherever that may be, people want the same basic things: jobs, homes, good public services, a safe and attractive environment and a society offering opportunity for all. North or south, rural or urban, all parts of our country, though different, affect and are affected by each other.

That is why the Government is publishing two parallel white papers describing how we mean to help all communities, rural and urban, achieve their full potential. Our guiding principle in both is that people must come first. Our policies are based on engaging local people in a partnership for change.

But many rural communities are going through difficult changes. Basic services have become over-stretched. In traditional industries, such as farming, incomes are falling and jobs are disappearing. There has been pressure for unwelcome development. Wildlife diversity has declined. Previous Governments have failed to tackle these problems. Over the past 20 years we have seen post offices disappearing, council houses sold off, rural schools closed, building on green fields and village bus services cut.

We are beginning to turn this round. There have been real improvements over the past three years. We have stemmed the closure of rural schools and we are introducing measures to reduce closures of post offices in rural areas. We are working to help farmers through very difficult times, providing millions of pounds in additional support and a new direction in agricultural policy. We are recruiting extra police officers in rural areas and, as part of our 10-year transport plan, have begun investing more in rural bus and train services.

We know, however, that there is much more to do. Our vision is of a countryside in which we all take the opportunities which change brings to build sustainable rural communities in an improved countryside environment. It is of towns and villages where people can choose to live in the communities in which they grew up and find affordable homes, send their children to good local schools and have access to high quality public services – services often delivered in new ways, and through new outlets.

Our vision is of rural areas evolving in ways which enhance landscape and biodiversity. It is of a forward looking and competitive farming industry, delivering good stewardship of the environment as well as producing our food. It is of a rural economy based on information technology as well as on traditional skills. In short, not a theme park, but a living, working countryside for real people. We want a countryside which can shape its own future, with its voice heard by Government at all levels.

This booklet is a short summary of our approach, and the new steps we are taking to help country people build the future they want: a future based on real policies for those real people.

Living in the countryside

Living in the countryside has a great deal to offer. People value the quietness and sense of space, the beauty of natural surroundings, the traditions and sense of community.

But over the last twenty years, the pace of social and economic change has put increasing pressure on rural communities. While some have attracted new business, many have lost local services and jobs in agriculture and other traditional industries. Poor quality development has encroached on some valued landscapes and wildlife habitats have declined. Young people have left remote rural areas, while some villages close to cities have become commuter dormitories.

We want to reverse the decline and help country people build a better future.

Our vision is of:

• a living countryside, with thriving rural communities and access to high quality public services;
• a working countryside, with a prosperous and diverse economy, giving high and stable levels of employment;
• a protected countryside, in which the environment is sustained and enhanced, and which all can enjoy; and
• a vibrant countryside which can shape its own future and whose voice is heard by government at all levels.

The white paper, A Fair Deal for Rural England explains how we are shaping government policy and investment to make the vision a reality. This booklet summarises our approach.

We are investing in quality services…

For the first time we are publishing a rural service standard, setting out minimum standards and targets and explaining how they will be delivered. This pledge is a starting point. It will be updated as our modernisation of public services proceeds and we are able to improve those standards. It will be reviewed every year.

We will:

• continue to safeguard rural schools against closure, and invest to improve them;
• connect all rural schools to the internet by 2002;
• create more childcare and early education places;
• increase resources for rural ambulances to cut response times;
• improve GP services through mobile units; and
• set up new one stop primary health care centres, offering video and telelinks to specialist health advice without the need to travel far.

We are working to make communities safer through initiatives such as crime reduction partnerships and local watch schemes: there are now 500 farm watch schemes in England and Wales. £15 million from the police modernisation fund is earmarked for rural policing this year and £30 million next year. Chief Constables will be taking on more regular officers, and recruiting more special constables too.

…and will deliver them in better ways…

Providing services effectively to people living in small, scattered rural parishes means being more customer-orientated. And it means being more innovative in the way we deliver those services: for example, using new technology; sharing buildings between several providers; using mobile units and offering appointment bookings which take account of the distances people may have to travel and what transport they have. We are asking all rural service providers to adopt these principles.

Ninety-nine per cent of people in rural areas live within three miles of a post office. We aim not only to retain the rural post office network, but to extend both its range of business activities and the other services it offers. As a start, we will be setting up a pilot scheme which will offer banking, one stop internet access, pensions, benefits, prescriptions and health advice as well as normal post office business.

We are setting up a £15 million ‘community service fund’ to help local groups, including churches and voluntary bodies re-establish vital services which villages have lost. Village shops, pubs and garages will be able to apply for grants from this fund for providing facilities such as cash machines or cash back services, parish meeting rooms, or technology access points like internet kiosks. We are proposing mandatory 50 per cent rate relief to pubs and garages which benefit the rural community, as well as to village shops. This could save them up to £1,250 a year.

The internet provides a great new opportunity to bring information and services to rural people. We are setting up 100 internet access and learning points across the country so that people in rural areas have easy and convenient use of information and communications technology to help them access, for instance, health advice, employment opportunities, legal and court services.

...providing affordable homes in villages and towns for local people…

We want young people to be able to live in the communities where they grew up. Overall we expect to provide 3,000 new homes each year in small rural settlements which will be affordable to local people, especially young couples.

We are doubling both the Housing Corporation’s overall budget and its rural programme to double the number of extra subsidised homes for rent from 800 to 1,600 homes each year. We are also increasing support for people on modest incomes to buy their own homes, and people in some rural areas will benefit from the new starter home initiative to help key workers buy in areas of high prices and high demand.

Planning authorities will make better use of their powers to secure affordable housing as part of new developments.They can insist on a proportion of social housing even on the smallest site. Where necessary, they may look for one affordable home for every house developed for the open market.

We will consult on a proposal to allow local authorities to charge full council tax on second homes and to use the money to meet local housing needs.

Our policy of building 60 per cent of new homes on previously-developed land will relieve unnecessary pressure for building in the countryside.

…with better transport connections…

Transport connections are the life line for villages. But public transport is not so readily available in rural areas. And for one in three households, private motoring is not an available option.To be responsive to rural needs, transport needs to be flexible. The white paper proposals will increase the range of options people have for getting about and encourage more locally-based and innovative solutions.

We want to make it easier for people to get to and from their local market town, wherever they live. Over the next three years we will be increasing the subsidy for rural buses by 45 per cent compared with the last three years. We aim to have an hourly or more frequent bus service within ten minutes walk of a third more rural homes.

Over the next three years, we are doubling the money available through the rural transport partnership scheme from £6 million to £12 million every year to support all sorts of transport schemes especially suited to local circumstances. We are also providing £60 million rural bus challenge funding for innovative bus and minibus services (25 per cent more than over the last three years).

Smaller communities will also benefit from a new £15 million special parish fund. Parishes will be able to apply direct for up to £10,000 for small scale projects such as buying a minibus, setting up a social car scheme, or a car or moped pool, or paying a bus company to divert a route through an outlying village.This will give them more freedom to decide on the kind of help they need.

The tax reductions for motorists announced in November 2000 will help those who depend on car transport. Some 50 new rural bypasses and schemes to reduce traffic speed through villages will improve road safety for people living in the country.

…rejuvenating market towns and creating a thriving modern economy…

We see market towns as the essential drivers of rural economic prosperity and we are committed to strengthening them. We are investing an extra £37 million through the Regional Development Agencies to help them create new job opportunities, new workspaces, restored high streets, better amenities and good transport links to their surrounding areas. More money will be available through European and matching funds, bringing the total package of funding for market towns up to £100 million over the next three years. We will help market towns carry out a ‘health check’ to define their priorities.

We will help rural businesses succeed by offering better business support through the government’s Small Business Service and through information and communications technology. We are stimulating wider broadband coverage to make high speed internet access and business data transfer available in more rural areas. We will raise skill levels, using the internet to extend training opportunities. And our 10-year plan for transport will improve infrastructure in rural areas.

We are consulting on wider proposals on rate relief to help small businesses.

…with a new future for traditional industries…

More than any other activity, farming defines the fabric of British rural life. Agriculture’s primary role will continue to be producing the bulk of the nation’s food and contributing to exports. But its contribution to maintaining an attractive and diverse country environment and to the wider local economy is increasingly important.

We are working to reform the European common agricultural policy away from production quotas and subsidies and towards more competitive markets and supporting objectives for protecting the environment and developing rural economies.

The new England Rural Development Programme will invest £1.6 billion in the countryside by 2006. Money for agri-environment schemes will double. The ERDP will fund vocational training to improve farming methods, develop new farm businesses and promote environmentally sensitive practices. It will also provide £152 million for a new Rural Enterprise Scheme to help farmers diversify, new grants for energy crops and for marketing and processing, and additional funds for woodland grants.

We are also making it easier for farmers to develop new businesses by reducing unnecessary legislation and planning restrictions, for instance, on converting farm buildings.

We will provide targeted help for small and medium sized abattoirs. This will benefit animal welfare and boost local jobs as well as helping farmers who are preparing products for specialist and organic markets.

…ensuring everyone can enjoy the countryside...

Tourism is an important rural business. Day visitors spend around £8 billion a year in the English countryside. We want more people to be able to enjoy its pleasures, which is why we are opening up more rights of access to mountain, moor, heath and registered common land as well as protecting and improving our network of historic rights of way.

In future, tourism-related businesses such as forestry and horse riding will provide increased sources of rural income, as will distinctive local products.

The English Tourism Council and the Countryside Agency will produce a joint strategy to help promote rural tourism beyond the oversubscribed 'honeypot' sites. It will focus on better visitor information, better business advice and co-operation, access to start-up finance and a review of planning guidance.

…while protecting what makes the countryside special...

At the same time as encouraging visitors, we must preserve the things that make the countryside special: peace, space, wildlife and the natural beauty of the landscape.

We will use the planning system to cut development pressure on the countryside in favour of recycling previously-developed 'brownfield' land.

Our policy is that the countryside should be protected for its own sake. We will give stronger protection to our most valued landscapes in designated national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. But we will also ask planning authorities to try to maintain valued and distinctive local features of the countryside everywhere.

We will restore disappearing wildlife species and habitats. We are doubling the number of Countryside Stewardship Scheme participants each year. The scheme pays farmers to farm in ways which benefit wildlife and enhance the landscape.

We will issue new national guidance for local wildlife sites and develop new biodiversity strategies for England for species and habitats most in need.

...we will give rural communities a bigger say in their own affairs...

Every part of rural England is different. Our approach is not ‘one-size-fits-all’ but gives communities a tool kit of measures. Local people are best placed to identify their individual challenges and opportunities and to shape their future. We will put up £5 million to help 1,000 rural communities develop town and village plans to put to the local planning authority. They will set out what people want their communities to be like: how housing should be built; what features should be preserved; what design is in keeping with the character of the area.

We will also strengthen the most local tier of administration, the town or parish council, and give it a bigger role. Quality councils which meet certain criteria, including being well managed and good at representing local views, will be able to work more closely with partner authorities to take on more responsibility for shaping their area’s development and running its services.

We know from consultation that one of the things we must continue to improve is co-ordination of policy at national, regional and local level. We are doing so. We are committed to joined up policies which recognise that economic, environmental and social issues are interdependent and cannot be tackled successfully in isolation from each other.

…and listen to local people

We have consulted and listened to the people and organisations who live and work in the countryside in preparing A Fair Deal for Rural England. Around 2,000 individuals and groups have responded to us with their views, suggestions and priorities.

We mean to keep this dialogue open and will establish a national rural sounding board chaired by ministers. We want to give rural people a strong voice on delivery of services. There will also be regional rural sounding boards to monitor the regional and local delivery of policy in rural areas. From now on, all government departments will have to consider and report on how their policy decisions will impact on rural communities. The sounding board will see the Countryside Agency's formal annual assessments of progress.

We believe the measures set out in our white paper will make a better quality of life for people living in country communities. We will monitor each of the key policies and programmes in the white paper and review how well they help us deliver our promises by measuring a collection of key indicators. The results will be published each year in the Countryside Agency's State of the Countryside Report.

Real policies for real people

For country residents:

• investment in better public services – schools, health, transport and crime reduction – and a rural service standard, reviewed annually
• 3,000 new affordable homes every year in small settlements
• access to a wide range of day-to-day transactions through post offices, internet and local small businesses
• a bigger say in community planning

For rural businesses:

• investment in market towns and more targeted help from Regional Development Agencies
• better transport, ICT coverage, skills training and business advice
• potential reduction in rate bills

For farmers:

• more money for agri-environment schemes; marketing grants, and tailored business advice to help modernise and improve agricultural, horticultural and forestry holdings
• help with planning to enable farmers to use surplus farm buildings and, less burdensome regulation generally
• help with diversification, marketing and skill training
• support for small and medium sized abattoirs

For everyone:

• stronger protection for our most valued landscapes, and for wildlife and habitats
• more access and a better rights of way network
• a living, working countryside maintained for the benefit of us all, wherever we live

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This booklet is a summary of the Government's white paper.
Copies of the full document are available from The Stationery Office priced £28.

If you would like further copies of this leaflet (product code 00RD1023) contact:
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