Press release

Embargoed until 0001 Monday 27 July 2009

RURAL COMMUNITIES TO SHAPE
THEIR OWN MANIFESTO

The country road to the 2010 General Election begins today

Rural communities are being asked to say what they want to hear from the political parties at the 2010 General Election, in what is expected to be the biggest ever manifesto consultation process, which starts today, Monday 27 July.

The Rural Services Network (RSN), a group of over 250 public and private sector service providers, has published a Consultation Paper (450Kb pdf). The paper is the first step on the road to a Rural Manifesto, expected in November, that is designed to influence the debate over the future of our rural areas in the period leading up to the expected 2010 General Election.

The Consultation Paper calls on all political parties to give a fair deal to those living in rural areas. The RSN says that funding problems mean that people in the countryside often enjoy a lower standard of service that urban dwellers.

The Paper focuses on ten key areas of concern for the countryside:

• Rural proofing – designing policies that don’t harm the countryside
• The Rural Economy after the Recession
• Supporting Rural Communities
• Central Government Funding Formulae
• Safeguarding small rural schools
• Affordable rural housing
• Healthcare in the countryside
• Rural transport and safer roads
• Digital Britain in the countryside
• Fuel poverty in the countryside

Graham Biggs, Chief Executive Officer of the RSN said:

‘The Consultation Paper provides an important opportunity for all people in the countryside to start to make their voices heard as we approach the 2010 General Election. The views that we receive will be fed into the Rural Manifesto that we intend to publish later this year.

‘The threat to rural schools, the lack of affordable housing and the high cost of living in the countryside are among the issues we expect people will want to raise.

‘As we face an unprecedented period of public spending restraint, it is essential that metropolitan policy-makers are reminded that the needs of the countryside are often very different to those of the city. Many services survive on a shoestring, which means that even small cuts can seriously undermine them.’

The consultation closes at the end of September 2009 with the Manifesto being launched at the end of November 2009.

National and local spokespeople are available for interview. Please contact Daniel Rosenstone on 020 7067 0751 or Jon McLeod on 07775 530978.

The Rural Services Network is a group of more than 250 organisations working together to improve the delivery of rural services across England. Further information and a full list of members is available at http://www.rsnonline.org.uk/members.html. Copies of the Consultation Paper are available by clicking here. The two operating arms of the network are the Sparsity Partnership for Authorities Delivering Rural Services (SPARSE) and the Rural Services Partnership.

Submissions to the consultation exercise should be made to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or via the RSN website, where there are extensive opportunities for online comment. Alternatively, you can write to Rural Manifesto Consultation, c/o Daniel Rosenstone, Weber Shandwick, Fox Court, 14 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8WS. The consultation closes on Wednesday 30 September 2009, after which the RSN will collate the responses and incorporate the widest range of thinking and insights into the final manifesto, which will be published in November 2009.

The Rural Services Network is a group of over 250 service providers and local authorities working to establish best practice across the spectrum of rural service provision. The network has representation across the complete range of rural services, including local authorities, public bodies, businesses, charities and voluntary groups. We are devoted to safeguarding and improving services in rural communities across England. We are the only national network specifically focusing on this vital aspect of rural life.

The Rural Services Network exists to ensure services delivered to the communities of predominantly rural England are as strong and as effective as possible. The term 'predominately rural' refers to counties and Local Authority districts with at least 50 percent of their population living in rural settlements (ie. rural towns, villages, hamlets and dispersed dwellings) as identified in the Office for National Statistics' rural definition, and including larger market towns as identified in the Defra classification of local authority districts. The rural definition and classification were devised by the Rural Evidence Research Centre (RERC) at Birkbeck College. Further information on these can be found on the RERC website at www.rerc.ac.uk.