Rural Big Society

This article profiles a report from rural guru and all round good bloke Mark Shucksmith, which makes the point very strongly that a policy which leaves every community to fend for itself will mean some communities do better than others. It tells us:

“When there not much money around – like now – the temptation for government is to leave people in rural communities to themselves. But that was a model that was discredited because it led to great inequalities between places where people had individual capacities and the ability to network and other places where they may have skilled people but they are divided and have fewer resources.”

For example the South Witham Broadband Project, set up by a Lincolnshire village within a few miles of the A1, where people have skills in IT and private income, has improved internet access across the area.

But more remote villages need help to form a team and access the grants available to improve their internet connection.

Prof Shucksmith is concerned the divide will deepen as the ageing population in rural areas means that even fewer people are able to fight to retain services.

He said it was not just the case of money. Villages in the Highlands and Islands have thrived with funding from Europe while areas of Cumbria and Northumberland with proactive MPs have managed to get grants from Government.

However in other areas, where the community is increasingly dominated by holiday homes and an ageing population and people have less experience of lobbying MPs or making use of the media, they risk losing their services like the bus, post office and village shop.

I was at a workshop discussing the outcomes of the CRC enquiry into the rural activities of LEPs onTuesday and we fell to discussing what the current policy of Government was in terms of economic development. The discussion resonated very strongly with the central premise of Mark’s report. Under the last Government the whole thrust of economic policy was to address regional disparities. The near impossibility of this, even with over £2billion a year, did for the RDAs. We now have the backlash with a policy which seems to put little emphasis on addressing spatial inequalities. One reading of Mark’s report might be we have “thrown the baby out with the bathwater”. I interpret the way forward as encouraging very local opportunities to build economic resilience by investing at the very local to build local solutions. This however still leaves me wondering where the resources are going to come from?