INITIATIVES set up under the 2000 Rural White Paper to help market towns may have passed into history, but their legacy lives on, finds Brian Wilson.

INITIATIVES set up under the 2000 Rural White Paper to help market towns may have passed into history, but their legacy lives on, finds Brian Wilson.

A paper has been published by Gordon Morris which is partly about the ambitions for autonomy of rural or market towns (or more precisely their Town Clerks). It also explores the extent to which they recognise market town initiatives that came about through the last Rural White Paper some fourteen years ago. Hence the paper's main title, What's left, what's been done and what next?

The author of the paper, now at the Centre for Rural Policy Research at Exeter University, was an employee at the Countryside Agency and closely involved in its market towns work. The author of this article should declare an interest, being another ex-Countryside Agency employee and a long time colleague of Gordon.

Evidence for this paper was generated by a survey of Town Clerks run in summer 2013, which received 193 useable responses. These came from across rural England and from places with a population that ranged up to about 30,000. Checks show that many took part in the former Market Towns Initiative.

The 2000 Rural White Paper (RWP) launched the Market Towns Initiative (MTI), an innovation at the time, recognising the importance of such settlements to rural areas as a whole – not least as service centres and places of employment. It fostered Market Town Partnerships, Health Checks and Action Plans. Alongside this were other RWP initiatives which benefitted market towns.

In the intervening period it is fair to say that public sector policies, programmes and structures have undergone frequent and far-reaching change, making it hard to gauge the RWP's longer term impact or legacy. Market towns work transferred from the Countryside Agency to Regional Development Agencies, who were themselves later disbanded.

An obvious challenge for a survey of this type is the short shelf life of institutional memory. As one response put it succinctly: "new clerk, new councillors, lack of knowledge". Equally telling were three places which declined to complete the survey on the grounds they weren't even market towns, when those places had been part of the Market Towns Initiative.

That said, most respondents were still aware of the MTI, if not of most other RWP programmes. On the face of it, what's disappointing is that so few were still undertaking MTI-type work by 2013. That, though, must be tempered by the fact that two broad explanations emerge: first, that it proved impossible to sustain such partnership working; and second, that MTI-type work has simply completed and agendas have moved on. A number of those continuing such work are supported by Towns Alive (formally Action for Market Towns).

Some 76 (or 40%) of the responding Town Councils said they were currently involved in Localism initiatives, which can probably be taken to mean neighbourhood planning or the various community rights. The other frequently mentioned initiative was the Portas Pilots scheme, to rejuvenate struggling high streets.

Widespread evidence of local ambition also comes, perhaps unsurprisingly, from responses referring to locally managed assets and locally delivered services, whether involving council staff and/or volunteers. Some adding, this was nothing new and was "what we have always done and always will do", rather than localism per se.

Interestingly, around 85 of these towns had a food bank and another 20 were setting one up – figures which feel like the starting point for further research.

Across almost all of the measures and initiatives asked about by this survey, Town Councils which had attained Quality Parish Council status were more likely to be engaged.

Overall, Morris concludes that RWP programmes are not now well remembered or readily identifiable. Some, though, still exist in the sense of local projects, often subject to uncertain funding. Wheels to Work schemes and Rural Housing Enablers are good examples.

It can be said that this should not matter, so long as lessons were learnt and successor approaches developed. Today's projects are seen as having become "individualised", taking place but not through any national or regional programme. Whilst this localised approach has advantages, what Morris misses is the earlier scope for sharing and learning.

Perhaps it is fair to conclude that the memory may fade, but the spirit of the RWP and the Market Towns Initiative lives on. This can be seen in activity such as the widespread take-up of neighbourhood planning amongst rural towns. The RWP approach of partnership working, expert enabling (or support) for communities and locally driven action still feels rather contemporary, does it not?

This article was written by Brian Wilson whose consultancy, Brian Wilson Associates, can be contacted at [email protected]. Brian also acts as the RSN Research Director.