Rural Vulnerability Index

Dan Bates of the RSN and I are really chuffed that this story has made a dint in the public sector debate in Scotland. We conceived and ran the underpinning analysis for it and Jane Atterton who has an excellent pedigree in rural (you will find several references to her work in the OECD review of rural policy inEngland) put it into a policy context. It shows that the issue of an over dependency on public services in many parts of rural England is equally true north of the border.

Dan and I would be pleased to share some more detail on our approach if you are interested. The article itself goes on to say:

“The report concluded the impact of public sector cuts on towns should be constantly monitored and policies tailored to suit the needs of different areas. Its author Jane Atterton said the findings should be treated with some caution.”We haven’t got all towns in there from acrossScotland, this is a selection of 44 so we do have to be a little bit careful about how we talk about different towns in the sense of where they sit in the index,” she said.”The reasons for the vulnerability do differ, but certainly it is an important thing for policy makers and local practitioners to be looking at.”

The head of the Labour group on Dumfries and Galloway Council, where two of the more vulnerable towns are located, said the study showed the impact of UK  government policy.”