The Rural Coalition, a network of 13 national rural organisations who all subscribe to a vision for a living and working countryside in England, joined forces last week at a reception in the House of Lords

The event focused on ‘Levelling Up in Rural Areas: Unlocking the Potential and was hosted by the Coalition’s President the Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith, Bishop of St Albans. 

The Rt Hon Lord Benyon, Minister for Rural Affairs, Access to Nature and Biosecurity attended the event and shared his focus on rural communities.

Mark Pragnall of Pragmatix Advisory presented research commissioned by the Rural Services Network that showed that ‘Were England’s rural communities a distinct region, their need for Levelling Up would be greater than that of any other part of the country. 

You can read more at this link

Kerry Booth Chief Executive Designate of the RSN, shared some of the challenges with attendees, that included representatives from the Rural Coalition organisations and DEFRA, over how to ensure that rural is not left behind in the levelling up agenda, and finally Jeremy Leggett of ACRE, provided wider commentary on some of the rural community issues and levelling up.

The Rural Coalition shared a short document (below) with attendees which provides an overview of the challenges for rural communities along with some asks of Government.

Read the Rural Coalition Handout here

To achieve the ambitions in rural areas requires the following strategic measures:

• Clarity about the relationship between the Government’s annual rural proofing report and levelling up. Both demand a cross-departmental approach. Embedding rural proofing in the development of the policy programme for levelling up and actions flowing from it would result in real system change for rural England.
• The Levelling Up Advisory Council should have a specific duty to monitor levelling up in rural areas, assisted by a rural expert advisory committee.
• Levelling Up Directors should have a clear role from the outset to ensure that the needs of rural areas are recognised and addressed in their areas.
• A report for the Rural Services Network by Pragmatix Advisory, published on 20th June, found that “were England’s rural communities a distinct region, their need for Levelling Up would be greater than that of any other part of the country”. The report finds that the Government’s metrics do not properly account for the pressures facing our smaller towns and villages.”
• As presented in the Levelling Up White Paper, the majority of the 12 missions could be achieved in urban areas alone, risking rural needs, challenges and opportunities being overlooked or ignored. The metrics for measuring progress against the ambitions/targets must be at a granular enough level to capture what is happening in more sparsely populated rural areas and to monitor progress in addressing necessary actions.
• The missions and targets need to measure improvements within regions and areas, including rural areas, not just between regions.
• Decision-making and delivery mechanisms need to be at appropriate levels of locality to take account of rural circumstances. Experience shows that regional and/or city-focussed organisations and private-sector led bodies are not sufficiently sensitive to rural issues and the needs of rural communities or of the very small firms which predominate in rural areas.
• Funding formulae across all services must be sufficiently fine-grained to recognise rural needs – and the additional costs of service delivery - and enable a fairer distribution of national resources.
• The bigger the geographical area for which a body has responsibilities, the greater the number of very different types of communities within them. Whilst sometimes policies do need to reflect urban-rural dependencies, a more appropriate approach is to consider where it is necessary to cover larger (mixed rural and urban) geographies. Combining rural areas with urban areas has, historically, meant rural areas losing out, as it is almost always easier (and less costly) to achieve performance targets in densely populated areas than more sparsely populated rural areas. Whatever approach is adopted, extra care must be taken to avoid disadvantaging rural areas unfairly.

The Rural Services Network, along with the Rural Coalition will continue to raise the profile of rural areas to ensure that their voices are heard by those developing and designing policy.  Whilst levelling up is a complex and long term programme, it is a golden opportunity for a real system change for rural areas of England, in how they are perceived and how the very real challenges they face are tackled, and in making rural proofing not just an ambition but a reality. The benefits will be felt by not just rural communities but by the country as a whole.