The Countryside Alliance has called for greater recognition of rural communities in the government's devolution agenda. In a submission to an inquiry by the Labour Rural Research Group that closed yesterday (11 November), we set out a range of proposals about how devolution in England could better serve rural areas.
Our response highlights the risk that, where regional authorities cover large geographical areas, decision-making and resources could become concentrated in major urban centres, leaving surrounding rural communities overlooked. Population-based funding arrangements, for instance, may fail to reflect the higher costs of delivering services across sparsely populated areas, where residents often must travel further and have fewer public transport options.
We argue that rural communities need meaningful representation within the new strategic authorities that the government plans to put in control of regions, alongside measures such as ringfenced rural funding and a statutory duty to consider rural needs when developing policies and services.
One especially significant area for consideration is the devolution of regulatory powers. Decisions that have a significant impact on rural life are too often taken by central regulators with limited understanding of the communities and industries they affect. We highlight as an example shooting and its associated land management practices, where regulators have shown themselves susceptible to political pressure from predominantly urban animal rights activists to adopt increasingly prescriptive approaches.
We believe there is a strong case for bringing such decisions closer to the rural communities they primarily affect, extending the principle across agriculture, food production, tourism, land management and rural enterprise. Planning, infrastructure and environmental regulation should all be informed by an understanding of how rural businesses operate and the contribution they make to national prosperity.
The submission also proposes adapting the Alliance's existing recommendations for reconnecting government with the countryside to the devolved level. These include Rural Community Impact Assessments, an annual State of the Countryside report considered by local scrutineers and a Countryside Champion to represent rural interests within strategic authorities.
Devolution must not simply result in the centralisation of decision-making at a different level of government. Rural communities should have a meaningful role in shaping their own futures, with the recognition and support needed to realise their economic potential and ensure that the benefits of devolution are felt across the whole of England's countryside.
You can read our full submission by clicking here.