Funding boost for rural regions
The RSN is making real progress with a Government interested in listening to its rural hinterlands. This article from the Western Morning News profiles how our All Party Parliamentary Group has managed to get the issue of additional service delivery costs – the rural premium – right in the public eye. It explains how this issue has surfaced in terms of the debate about potential retention, at the local level, of business rates:
“Mr Pickles’ “resource review” partly centres on the system of business rates, which are put into a national pot then redistributed by Whitehall according to a complex formula of local needs.
Rural advocates say the mechanism used for distributing government grant ignores rural deprivation and under-estimates the costs of delivering services to far-flung communities.
But if money is re-directed to more isolated parts of the country, ministers are likely to face an outcry from poor urban areas, particularly if it widens the apparent “north-south” economic divide.
Yorkshire Tory MP Graham Stuart, who tabled the question, and is chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on rural services, said: “We will aim to work with him in the future to carry this forward, because until we see a fundamental change in things like health funding and local authority grant levels, rural areas will continue to fall behind.”
Other MPs including Andrew George (St Ives) chipped in and we are starting to see a growing momentum not just on this issue but on public recognition of the additional challenges of funding services in rural areas by Government more widely. There’s much more ground to cover on this issue – which is at the heart of our work but its great to see some significant progress being made.