Press release: 16 August 2010
Britain’s rural villages are at risk of dying unless radical action is taken to secure their future, it is being warned.

A newly formed Rural Coalition, made up of leading organisations which represent rural interests, is calling on the Government to deliver on its Big Society vision by radically empowering local people to shape the rural places in which they live.

They are warning that without this action, rural services face meltdown as spending is cut, housing will outprice all but the wealthiest, and rural wages will continue to lag as much as 20% behind urban averages

The Rural Challenge – a blueprint for Big Society in small places

Today the Rural Coalition publishes The Rural Challenge, a report outlining detailed proposals to give local people, entrepreneurs, community groups and councils the ability to bring about positive change that will ensure a thriving future for the countryside. The report is being billed as a blueprint for delivering the Big Society in the small places which are at huge risk unless action is taken now.

• Download The Rural Challenge Report (opens pdf in new window)

The Rural Challenge report sets out detailed propositions for taking on 5 key challenges facing the countryside:

• meeting rural housing need
• building thriving economies
• delivering good rural services
• creating flourishing market towns
• empowering local communities

The Rural Coalition, chaired by Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, believes this can be achieved by letting communities seize the initiative.

Key recommendations

Urging the Government to give greater independence to local residents and councils
To ensure that rural communities can continue to live and work, and therefore be the foundation of a beautiful and living countryside with a secure long-term economic future.

Scrapping plans for referendums in the Government’s Community Right to Build scheme
These would require 90% community support before new, small scale development can go ahead in villages. The coalition says the requirement could wreck the aim of the Government’s proposals and create long lasting conflict within communities which brings local development to a halt.  Instead, elected parish councils, empowered by a community-led plan, should be able to initiate small community-led developments, within a reinvigorated and localised planning system designed to meet local needs in keeping with the area.

Allowing town hall planners, local councils and communities to come up with innovative solutions to the rural affordable housing crisis
By reforming the Housing Revenue Account and letting councils keep money from selling council homes, local authorities will be freed to help address the urgent need for new housing for young families and low-income households in rural areas.

Calling for the Government to take proper account of the impact of public sector funding cuts on rural areas
The Government needs to do this before finalising the Comprehensive Spending Review in October. By allowing communities to share some of the savings the Government makes to public spending on services, communities would be empowered to develop innovative local alternatives through community provision – including community ownership of

• shops
• Post Offices
• pubs
• broadband hubs
• sustainable energy
• local community transport

Pressing for a radical transformation of planning practice
This would give communities the lead in planning for thriving and sustainable new neighbourhoods when market towns need to grow. Too often market towns in urban areas have been ringed with endless suburban style housing estates and business parks, without any sense of rural identity.

Support for the Rural Coalition

The coalition is made up of, and supported by, an unprecedented range of bodies from the private, public and charity sector.

Chairman Matthew Taylor, who authored the Taylor Review of affordable housing and rural economies in 2008, said:

“On its current course, with no change in policy and no commitment to action, much of the countryside is becoming part dormitory, part theme park and part retirement home.

“We need a fundamental change of approach at both national and local levels to give rural communities a more sustainable future. The rural coalition believes the Government’s commitment to localism and the Big Society opens the door to those reforms – but as yet there is a very real risk that in practice cuts will fall heaviest in rural communities which may lose services altogether, and opportunities will be missed to make rural communities prosper.

“For 50 years or more, policy has undervalued the countryside and failed to meet the needs of rural communities. The result is starkly apparent: rural communities have become increasingly less sustainable and less self-sufficient. Today we publish a blueprint for the Big Society in small places – if the Government is serious about localism, it should rise to the challenge.”

• Download The Rural Challenge Report (opens pdf in new window)

Further information

1. A copy of the report ‘The Rural Challenge: achieving sustainable rural communities for the 21st century’ can be found at: www.local.gov.uk from 16 August.

2. The Rural Coalition is made up of

• Action with Communities in Rural England
• Campaign to Protect Rural England
• Country Land & Business Association
• Local Government Association
• The Royal Town Planning Institute
• Town & Country Planning Association

The Rural Coalition was facilitated and advised by the Commission for Rural Communities, with additional help and support from

• Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
• Action for Market Towns
• Rural Services Network
• Carnegie UK Trust
• Plunkett Foundation
• English Heritage
• National Association of Local Councils
• National Housing Federation
• English National Parks Association

Special thanks are owed to Action with Communities for Rural England, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the National Housing Federation, and the Plunkett Foundation for providing financial support for the production of the report.

Quotes

The Local Government Association’s Rural Commission Chairman, Cllr Andrew Bowles, said:
“The proportion of affordable homes in rural areas is little more than half that in urban communities. If young families and low-income households are not able to access housing in villages, services like schools, buses and Post Offices become even less viable.

Councils have long been calling for greater autonomy and freedom to manage the finances of their own housing. This will free them up to meet the unique needs and aspirations of the areas and people they are elected to represent.”

Campaign to Protect Rural England Chief Executive Shaun Spiers said:
“The Rural Challenge calls for action now to ensure that our countryside continues to thrive into the future, a living countryside with its beauty and tranquillity soundly protected. Central to this is a reinvigorated planning system, in which local communities and councils are empowered to shape their neighbourhoods. CPRE looks forward to playing its part in ensuring such a positive future for the countryside.”

Country Land & Business Association Vice-President Henry Robinson said:
“The needs of rural communities for better jobs, housing, transport, services and leisure are similar to those in urban areas. Yet many in the countryside feel they are not receiving the benefits of national economic growth, and that Government does not fully understand the relationship between rural businesses, rural life and the environment.

“Some rural communities have become unsustainable because of a negative approach to development. The planning system has been used as a brake on appropriate and much-needed development in the countryside in the misplaced belief that this supports communities and the environment.”

Action with Communities in Rural England Chief Executive Sylvia Brown said:
“Rural communities already demonstrate ‘the Big Society’ in action, but with a supportive context set by central and local government, they can and will do far more to respond to new opportunities. We are pleased to see the Coalition’s backing for using the principles of Community led Planning to help local people decide on how they can better meet their aspirations.

Contacts

Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE): Sylvia Brown, 01285 653477 s.brown@acre.org.uk

Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE): Jack Neill-Hall, 020 7981 2819 JackNH@cpre.org.uk

Country Land & Business Association (CLA): Lisa Barker, 020 7460 7934 lisa.barker@cla.org.uk

Local Government Association (LGA): Simon Ward, 020 7664 3147 Simon.Ward@lga.gov.uk

Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI): Millie Lewis, 020 7929 9471 millie.lewis@rtpi.org.uk

Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA): Kate Henderson, 020 7930 8903 kate.henderson@tcpa.org.uk

• Read more about Action for Market Towns and The Big Society

Our towns are changing, but still perform vital roles as

• business and employment centres
• hubs for public services
• shopping centres for the surrounding area – including traditional markets
• a growing focus for new housing

Our small towns face many problems in the future, including

• loss of variety and closure of shops in town centres
• centralisation of health services causing problems for an ageing population
• inflated house prices driving young people out of the towns where they grew up
• decline of traditional industries
• lure of jobs in cities – towns become dormitories for their bigger neighbours

Small towns have many good points – they are great places to start businesses, popular places to live, and often bubbling with community spirit.

In a new burst of local energy, thousands of projects that tackle small town issues have sprung into being through local initiative and Community Led Planning, most often led by town partnerships of businesses, community organisations, local councils and individual volunteers.

• Find out more about Community Led Planning

Towns Alive

Drawing together all our work on small towns is the Towns Alive programme – a five-year Big Lottery funded programme to raise the game of our market towns in 4 ways:

• sharing experience and good practice through the Towns-4-Towns programme
• providing vital training through the Market Towns Academy
• analysing and developing policy through the Knowledge Hub
• providing a National Voice for market towns

cforms contact form by delicious:days

• Back to AMT Partner Welcome

Press Release 30.06.10

Government sponsored project will draw upon existing resources and best practice from across England and result in a practical guide for local authorities

Action for Market Towns (AMT) and Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and have announced the launch of a new project that will examine how local authorities can make the most of Community Led Planning (CLP) and promote the Big Society.

CLP has long been used by some local authorities to involve communities in local decision making and the improvement of services. A step-by-step approach to community empowerment, it provides communities with the opportunity to identify social, economic, environmental and cultural priorities for their area and enables them take on the responsibility for bringing about any improvements they desire, rather than waiting on others to do things for them.

Sylvia Brown, Chief Executive for ACRE said:

“The long history of Community Led Planning in rural areas has been a major factor in generating voluntary action, new initiatives and enterprises to improve services and facilities within communities. Around 4,000 communities have so far benefited from having a Community Led Plan, covering a total population estimated at 6.5 million.

“Despite being led by local people who bring the community together to develop the plan, we know how crucial it is to ensure that local authorities engage with the process and support the efforts of communities to become more self-reliant. There can be no better approach to setting the scene for delivering the aspirations of the Big Society.”

Evidence from the East of England reveals the extent of how Community Led Plans result in community action. Between 2002 and 2009, 231 communities created plans in the region, detailing over 9,000 individual actions. 47% of these actions were taken on by the communities concerned without external support. Of the remainder, 34% required negotiation with public service providers to bring them to fruition.

The investment of time and effort by local authorities and others in supporting CLP will reap dividends if communities find better ways of delivering local services. At a time of increasing public spending cuts, AMT and ACRE believe that it is even more important for local authorities to find the best ways to maximising the benefit of involving themselves in CLP.

The project to be undertaken by AMT and ACRE will invite local authorities and civil society organisations to come together and share their experiences of supporting CLP. The outcome will be better knowledge about the relationship between the various parties involved in CLP delivery and result in a best practice guide that is expected to be published by March 2011.

Alison Eardley, Policy Manager for AMT said:

“The emphasis of this project is really about highlighting the many good things that local authorities are already doing to support Community Led Planning. We think this is one of the most practical things that local authorities can do to support the creation of the Big Society.”

The project is part funded by The Department for Communities and Local Government’s Empowerment Fund.

For more information about this project, or CLP in general, please contact Alison Eardley, AMT (07876 598957, alison.eardley@towns.org.uk) or Phillip Vincent, ACRE (01285 653477, p.vincent@acre.org.uk)

These are questions we asked delegates attending the Regional Market Town Awards Showcase events in June and July 2010.  The ‘wordle’ above illustrates the strength of the responses grouped by categories.  Below is a little more detail about the type of points made for the top 5 of these categories.

1. limited-community-&-principal-authority-relations

• Variable
• Could always work better (they are patronising)
• Third sector organisations do not seem to work well with local authorities
• Limited local knowledge at district council
• Some principal authorities are over bureaucratic and unhelpful
• Difficulties experienced with some local authority departments even if others are supportive

In contrast, a significant number of comments defined the relationships as good.

2. new-governance-structures-&-mechanisms

• Rule book discarded – current confusion as to way forward
• Ability to let others take lead and/or back seat
• Partnership engagement and local governance structure
• Use local referendums to seek public opinion
• Possibility of a scoring/weighting system to improve employment, limit landscape damage

A separate and significant group of comments pointed to the introduction of new area-based forums as suitable structures for providing a focus for good working relations between community partnerships, town councils and principal local authorities.

3. better-integration-of-interests

• Less fragmented
• Local, strategic, district and county partnerships need to maintain links
• Need to investigate how well we can work together to achieve local aims
• Understand that community consists of community groups, business community and non-active part of community
• How to prevent single interest domination from either local or national groups
• Remembering the needs of sustainable developments

4. politics-&-personalities

• You have to play political game and in small towns personalities get in the way
• Need to try to stop being political
• Problem of “own” agendas – historic experience
• Same people take a lead
• Personalities can cause problems

5. improved-communications

• Different media suit different people
• Create different channels to access info:  exhibitions, website, telephone
• Use of technology, for example: Twitter
• Use of other situations to have discussions with the community, for example: stalls at events, rural cinemas

Analysis and Conclusions

(Debbie McGrath, Towns Alive Programme Manager and Alison Eardley, Policy Manager)

Improving working relations
The answers prompted by this question are quite wide ranging/locally specific so it is more difficult to draw a conclusion, except that the underlying desire seems to be to improve working relations between the community and local authorities and there appears to be an acknowledgement of the benefits of this.

The quality of the relationship alters so much from place to place and seems to a large part to depends on the skills and personality of the individuals involved.  This brings us back to the importance of training – not just for communities but for the local authority involved.

It is also apparent that there are many of examples of good practice across the country in terms of both reference to structures such as local area forums and more broadly through good communications and shared expectations.

A new era of community empowerment
‘Big Society‘ has been heralded as one of the key solutions to the period of ‘overspending’ and ‘tendency to live beyond one’s means’ that the Conservatives accuse the former Labour Government of overseeing.  The Prime Minister has said groups should be able to influence and indeed run local services including post offices, libraries, transport services and housing projects. The concept is intended as a significant advance for people power.

It is clear that those communities who can get this right will be more likely to receive support.  Therefore, while the need for community and local authorities to work together has always been a topic that has received much attention, now is the time to make it work, and speed is of the essence.

Local democracy
A situation where a community has greater powers to initiate and develop projects from the bottom up raises questions about how democratic such an approach is.

• How do you ensure that a community group is truly representative of the community and able to act in a way that does not over or under-represent specific elements of that community?
• What should the role of the elected politician be and how can they be upskilled to ensure that they are in a position to democratically represent their community (even those who did not vote for them)?

The key is to ensure that a national policy that sounds and looks good – on the surface appearing to empower local people – does not have unintended consequences for the more disadvantaged or indeed the more advantaged members of the very community it seeks to assist.

Accountability
In turn this leads to the question of who is accountable if ‘community’ is to take on a greater role in shaping and delivering services.  Within a top-down local authority structure, it is the elected member, but what about in a bottom-up structure?

The role of Community Led Planning
Recognising the potential of local knowledge, the importance of participation, youth involvement, consultation and engagement suggests the need for a broad and inclusive dialogue and a place for mechanisms that enable this through Community Led Planning (CLP).

This is an existing form of bottom-up, ‘community-led’ framework where local communities have a real involvement in the way their town is developed, and inform the statutory system. It is a structured process, involving local community groups, activists and volunteers in creating a vision for the community and an action plan to achieve it.

AMT supports CLP and believes that it is very much aligned to the Government’s thinking behind ‘Big Society’.  Town Action Planning has been developed as a methodology for those living in small and market towns and sits within the LEAD framework which has been jointly agreed with ACRE, the other leading partner in promoting CLP.

Support through Towns Alive
There is a lot of work being undertaken by a range of organisations on the topic of how communities and local authorities can better work together and the issues that are part of this.  Through Towns Alive there is the scope to tailor this to a small town setting, understanding how CLP can offer a solution and addressing the issues of democracy and accountability and how this relates to the Government’s Local Enterprise Partnership agenda.

A joint project with ACRE seeks to explore how local authorities can better engage in the Community Led Planning process.  Much guidance exists for communities on how they can best effect CLP but less exists for the local authority.  The project will address this and develop information for local authorities as part of the LEAD framework which underpins CLP.

In addition, work is to be undertaken to explore the how councils and community partnerships can combine forces effectively while ensuring that local democracy and accountability are not infringed.

• Find out more about Community Led Planning

Basic details

1. Name of the project
2. The market town in which the project was completed
3. The lead partnership or organisation submitting the project and eligible to receive the award.  This should be a Market Town Community Partnership or local authority.
4. The key partners who played a part in the delivery of the project.
5. Date when the partnership was formed.
6. Contact – this should be someone involved with the project and the completion of the application form. They must be available and able to answer any queries that arise during the evaluation of the form. The contact name will be published in our Best Practice Case Studies Database and given to the media (unless you make a specific request for privacy).

Categories

State which of the four categories you are entering your project under. Towns may enter different projects in different categories, but can make only one entry in each category.  Examples of the types of projects included in each category are:

• Environment and Culture: Environmental improvement, conservation, transport, heritage, streetscape design, leisure, tourism, sport
• Social and Community: Social issues, disadvantaged groups, community facilities, education, youth projects, housing, crime reduction
• Business and Economy: Workspace provision, training, business promotion, social enterprise, growth and diversification
• Partnership and Strategic Working: Health Check and Action Planning, succession planning, partnership management, influencing strategic policy, collaborative working

Some projects may fit into more than one category.  If this is the case, choose the most appropriate category by the project’s central objective or output.  If necessary, email awards@towns.org.uk for guidance.

Describe your project

Write a 50-word description of the project describing what it did and for whom. This summary will be used for any publicity associated with the awards.

Give a full project overview clearly stating which part of the project was completed between 1 April and 31 March of the relevant years, what it did, how, by whom and for whom.

Community and local need

Describe how you identified the local need for this project and how this need was fulfilled by the project activity. Describe how you involved the community in the design and delivery of the project.  Set your answer out under the three following sub headings:

• Community: Describe what part of the town community benefited from the project’s outcomes.  It may not necessarily be the entire community, for example, the business community.
• Need: Clearly describe how your project met local need.  Explain how you identified that this need existed.  Refer to your Healthcheck or any other research undertaken.
• Community involvement: Describe how you consulted with your community before or during the development phase of your project.  Explain how your community has been involved in the design, management and delivery of your project. Describe how they will be involved with the future sustainability of the project or project outputs.

Innovation, quality and transferability

The judges are particularly looking for evidence that you have designed and delivered your project to a high standard using innovative techniques.  Answer this question under the two sub-headings:

• Quality: Describe how the products, services and processes involved in your identifying, designing and delivering the project were of a high standard.
• Innovation: Demonstrate how the project itself or the methods used to deliver the project were new to the area or region. The judges are looking for imaginative approaches to common issues. Describe if you have, or plan to, mainstream your innovative activity and explain more widely how your innovative project or approach may be transferable to other areas.

Finance and funding

• Breakdown of project funding:  List sources and amounts of funding – include all in-kind contributions and local fund raising.
• Projections of ongoing costs and sources of funding: Describe how you will maintain financial viability.  Detailed accounts are not required. This is simply to assist the judges in assessing what has been achieved and how the project will be sustained in the future.

Images

Supply an electronic photograph or image of your project. These must be high resolution (300k file size or above) jpegs. The photographs will be used for publicity and as evidence to support your application.

What next?

• Register your interest for next year’s Market Town Awards
• Go to the Market Town Awards homepage