conservativerural action

Since 1997 power has been stolen from the countryside. Labour has created a new regional tier of government, directed by the centre, to control local affairs. It has acquired considerable powers over fire services, transport, culture, sport, planning and house building, social housing and environmental management.

Instead of giving local people greater discretion over how public money is spent in their area and more say in planning decisions, the Government is doing the opposite. Conservatives believe that rural communities know better than bureaucrats in Whitehall or the regions what is best for their local area and we will ensure that their voice is heard.

More local engagement

People who live in rural communities feel increasingly cut off from the political process and in some cases completely ignored. An increasing amount of central funding is ring-fenced, planning powers are being handed to remote regional authorities, and the impact of policy on rural areas is neither rigorously nor systematically assessed before it is implemented.

• We will abolish the unsuccessful regional planning system and pass planning responsibility back to local authorities.
• We will create non-statutory rural advisory groups, drawing together voluntary representatives from a wide range of countryside interests to ensure that Ministers understand rural concerns and decisions are taken in full knowledge of their impact on rural areas.
• We will set out in the annual Defra Departmental Report the steps being taken, on a department by department basis, to ensure that rural affairs are factored into policy development.
• We will make each police force accountable to an individual, directly elected by the citizens of the police force area.

Fairer rural funding

The majority of public money spent by local authorities comes from central government but the formula can be very unfair. We recognise that inner cities in particular often require greater levels of funding per head to address entrenched social disadvantage. However, the increasing levels of deprivation in rural areas must not be overlooked, nor the fact that the cost of delivering services in these communities can be significantly higher.

The current system of funding by central government has become discredited by Labour. Spending priorities seem as much motivated by political considerations as economic or social ones. We need a better, more transparent system for allocating local government funding.

• We will give the independent Audit Commission a new duty to report to Parliament on the draft Local Government Finance Settlement each year, thereby removing the political element from the allocation of grant settlements for individual local authorities.
• We will drastically reduce central government ring-fencing by moving away from a system of dedicated funding streams and towards block grants to local government. In doing so we will handback to rural communities the power to decide how to spend billions of pounds a year.
• We will operate the system set up by the Sustainable Communities Act to ensure that, when local residents have a particular priority, central government money is directed towards fulfilling that priority wherever possible.

Rural Development Funding

Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) currently deliver 20 per cent ofthe European Union funding that is available through the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE). Roughly half of this funding over the period 2007-13 is allocated to improve quality of life in rural areas and the diversification of the rural economy (known as axis 3).

There is considerable concern in rural communities that this money has limited reach into deep rural areas and focuses too heavily on large-scale flagship projects at the expense of small investments. For example,opportunities to develop local food production, processing and procurement are often ineligible yet provide considerable scope for rural enterprise.

The RDPE provides RDAs with an opportunity to fund measures to improve quality of life in the countryside, such as ‘village renewal’ and ‘basics services’. Regrettably, some RDAs have excluded these options completely. We do not believe that unelected regional bodies should beable to take such important potential funding streams for rural communities off the table. Indeed, we are not satisfied that RDAs are best placed to allocate funding for community regeneration in rural England.

• We will devolve European Union funding for axis 3 to local authorities, who know best the needs of their communities, and we will encourage them to allocate grant funding across the full range of permitted measures, including village renewal and basic services.