The call to the Prime Minister was made by the Commission for Rural Communities, which acts as the government's rural watchdog.

Commission chairman Stuart Burgess has spent eight months investigating ways of strengthening England's rural economy following last summer's floods and foot-and-mouth outbreaks.

His final report says Mr Brown should convene a national summit to focus government attention on ways of releasing the potential of the rural economy.

The document is seen as important because the investigation on which it is based was itself ordered by the Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown ordered the inquiry

In particular, a Rural Finance Forum would help overcome the causes of lower capital investment, poorer access to finance and lower funding for rural economic initiatives.

"We also know there is scope for significant improvement, and for some communities this will only come from better support."

Dr Burgess said his report recorded the substantial contribution rural enterprises made to the nation’s economic performance.

“In my visits to rural areas I am constantly reminded how enterprising rural people are and what diversity of successful firms and resilient communities we have."

The countryside was home to 30% of England’s businesses which generated at £325 billion annually. But a similar proportion of firms located throughout England earned higher levels of turnover.

This showed that the countryside had further potential for growth, claimed Dr Burgess.

"My report suggests this unfulfilled potential from rural firms might be around £236 to £347 billion per annum."

Medium and larger firms in rural areas could perhaps double their economic contribution, added Dr Burgess.

This would help to reduce worklessness and poverty in rural areas, close the gap between rural and urban wages and make more rural communities resilient against future economic and environmental shocks.

“At the heart of any drive for improvements will be better understanding of the scale and performance of rural economies from business and city leaders, economic departments and agencies," said Dr Burgess.

This was why the government should convene a national summit on the rural economy.

It should be accompanied by a series of regional summits to focus the attention of government agencies on releasing the potential of the countryside.

              See also:
                     • One million rural people 'living in poverty' (3 March 2008)
                     • Call for action to support rural England (3 March 2008)
                     • Tories lambast Defra's performance (5 December 2007)
                     • Spending review ignores rural affairs (9 October 2007)
                     • Flood recovery scheme reaches £1m (2 October 2007)
                            • Watchdog to probe summer of misery (19 September 2007)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

Chairman, Upper Eden Community Plan Group
written by Tom Woof, June 06, 2008

The perceived wisdom in planning policy seeks to restrict development in the countryside in favour of focussing it in towns and larger villages. While this is the right general approach, there is little subtlety in the way planning policy is implemented. It is often interpreted as over-restraint of development in small settlements and overkill in larger ones. Our evidence points to the affordability of housing as a key issue for economic vitality but, contrary to current thinking and practice, it exists in the small settlements to a much higher degree than in the larger ones. That is where it is felt most acutely too. Strategic planners appear to consider that those in housing need in the countryside will simply move to the nearest large settlement to live in social rented housing (if it becomes available). This is not only unlikely, but it actively destroys the communities in the villages and does little to boost economic development in rural areas. Social engineering of this kind rarely works, and planning policy is a very poor instrument with which to do it.

A better approach is to make the most of the opportunities that exist in small communities to provide affordable housing on an individual basis. This should include self-build affordable housing, live-work on former farmsteads and other small scale initiatives that do not exclude any settlement from the possibility of development. It is quite possible that such initiatives can operate successfully alongside a general policy of volume building and development in the main settlements; after all the countryside needs only small levels of development to maintain its vitality.

It is ironic too that the opportunities to provide truly sustainable zero carbon developments are often discouraged because they are considered to be ‘unsustainable’ from a locational point of view.

Those that live in the countryside have, often through necessity, developed a high degree of self reliance. This is a quality that should be harnessed rather than stifled. The last thing the countryside needs is attempts to tackle these problems from a centralised top-down position. More flexibility and subtlety in planning regulations would go along way to ease the situation and allow local communities to solve their own problems without needing huge amounts of scarce public investment.

• 
• +3
• 
• 

Show/hide comment form