A quarterly bulletin facilitated by your membership of the Rural Services Network highlighting a selection of current rural economic development news, issues and opportunities

Cross-government plan to speed up delivery of major infrastructure projects

Government has announced that major infrastructure projects such as new transport links, offshore wind farms and wastewater management facilities will be delivered faster under a new action plan published in February 2023.

Measures set out in the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) action plan aim to “streamline the planning process for large-scale infrastructure projects, speeding up building to support economic growth, improve connectivity across the country, bolster energy security for the future and deliver Net Zero.”

A new fast track process will be piloted, with powers for the Secretary of State to set shorter timelines for certain projects.

The changes also include increasing community engagement and making environmental protections more effective.

Departments responsible for NSIPs – Department for Transport, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – will shortly make announcements on their National Policy Statements which help to set the future direction for infrastructure.

You can read the Action Plan at the following link:
Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) reforms: action plan - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Rural England Prosperity Fund – a review of the prospectus and funding formula

The Rural Services Network has published its Rural Lens review of the Rural England Prosperity Fund Prospectus and Funding Formula.

Whilst welcoming the announcement of the long-awaited Rural England Prosperity Fund (REPF), a number of concerns are raised including:

• The scheme delivers capital funding only. It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what is needed to support activity in rural areas and is a backward step. The lack of revenue funding ignores the issues of the capacity of rural councils regarding the development and delivery of proposals.
• Capacity (or rather lack of it) is also a key issue for the business and community/voluntary organisations concerned, both in their ability to develop new products/services and support existing activities without some additional revenue support.
• A key difference to LEADER funding is that each LEADER programme had a Management & Administration budget, which could be up to 18% of the overall programme budget. It would have been very helpful if a provision such as that were included within the REPF.
• The allocation of funds such as the Rural England Prosperity Fund must better reflect the overall government funding (including the annual Local Government Funding Settlement) and therefore capacity issues of the different types of Councils benefiting from the schemes. In the Final Local Government Finance Settlement for 2023/24 Predominantly Urban areas get 59% more in Settlement Funding Assessment than do their Predominantly Rural counterparts – with the funding gap having widened compared to 2022/23.
• It is essential that there is a full evaluation in due course of the whole of the initiative.

You can read the full Rural Lens Review at the following link:
Rural Lens review on the Rural England Prosperity Fund Prospectus and Funding Formula - Rural Services Network (rsnonline.org.uk)

External finance and the growth of rural enterprises

The National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) has published the first report from research examining rural enterprises’ access to external finance and the impact on growth.

Employing the Longitudinal Small Business Survey 2015-2019 for firms in England located outside of London, it considers whether firms’ use of external finance varies across, and within, urban and rural locations, and explores its impacts on business growth.

Key findings include:

• “Rural firms are more dependent on debt finance than urban firms, particularly overdrafts and credit cards. Equity finance is significantly less used by both rural and urban firms than other financing options. Rural firms are more likely to seek equity finance from family and friends.”
• “Rural firms tend more often to seek external finance for equipment and vehicles than urban firms, and vice versa for staff training and development.”
• “There are some regional variations, which fluctuate across years. For instance, in the North East and South West, rural businesses are more likely to use bank finance than urban businesses.”
• “After controlling for firms’ and owners’ profiles, the amount of obtained external finance has a stronger impact on growth of rural firms than growth of urban firms.”

You can read the report’s conclusions and access a full copy of the report at the following link: Understanding access to external finance of rural enterprises and impact on growth - NICRE

Rural Cost of Living Survey underway

The Rural Services Network in partnership with the Citizens Advice Rural Issues Group has launched a Rural Cost of Living Household Survey.  

Independent research commissioned by the RSN in summer last year shows rural areas are suffering more acutely from the cost of living crisis compared to urban areas.

To lend more weight to the argument for more funding for rural areas the RSN is calling on as many rural residents as possible to complete a Rural Cost of Living Household Survey. 

The purpose of the survey is to understand more about rural household budgets at, what is, a very difficult time for many. This will help RSN and Citizens Advice to engage more effectively with Government Departments, MPs and other policy makers on these issues.

Over 4700 responses have already been received but we want more to ensure that every corner of rural England is represented. The survey closes on 31 March. The link to the survey is below. Please feel free to distribute this through your networks to ensure as many people take part as possible.

Suffering from the rural cost of living? Make your thoughts known in household survey - Rural Services Network (rsnonline.org.uk)

UK Seafood Fund for Skills and Training

There is up to £10 million in funding available through the Skills and Training Scheme to fund projects that improve the quality and range of training available for the catching, processing, aquaculture and recreational angling sectors.

The scheme has been split to provide:

• funding for the creation of courses, qualifications and specialist training equipment in round 1
• funding for training facilities in round 2

Applications for round 2 are open until 21 April 2023.

To apply, you must be involved in the catching, processing, aquaculture or recreational angling sector. The following types of organisations can apply for this grant:

• public bodies (including trust ports, local authority ports and public charities)
• private small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
• private non-SMEs
• fishermen’s associations
• private trusts, foundations or social enterprises
• trade associations
• officially recognised producer organisations set up by fishery or aquaculture producers
• trust ports

More information is available at:
UK Seafood Fund: Skills and Training Scheme - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

RSN 2023 seminar programme

You can book a place on six further RSN seminars throughout 2023.

The established successful seminar programme goes from strength to strength each year having moved online during Covid.

In 2022, over 630 delegates attended our seminars throughout the year, with over 240 organisations represented. That is a total of 1260 hours spent by members of the Rural Services Network listening to expert speakers, learning from best practice and networking with other rural colleagues. Time well spent!

Following two excellent seminars in January and February on the themes of Rural net Zero and Rural Connectivity, the remaining programme for 2023 includes six seminars throughout the year focusing on key topics of rural interest:

• Rural Fair Funding
• Rural Economy
• Rural Transport
• Rural Affordable Housing
• Rural Planning
• Rural Health and Care

Seminars are free to members of the RSN as part of their membership package.  You can get organised for 2023 and book your place now at one or more of these seminars at this link.

What’s more, our seminars in 2022 often featured member organisations sharing their projects and expertise, if you would like to feature at an upcoming seminar please contact [email protected] for more information.

Researching the adapting rural economy

Seven new research projects to examine how rural enterprises are adapting to the major challenges affecting the economy are to be undertaken.

The National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE) has commissioned the research to deepen its understanding on current topics such as post-pandemic working patterns and the shift to net zero.

The studies will explore co-working as a potential diversification opportunity for rural pubs, whether ‘investment zone’ approaches will help to meet the needs of rural enterprise, carbon accounting in farming and natural capital investment markets.

They will also consider the attraction and recruitment of staff in the Peak District, the way universities engage, support and collaborate with rural communities and how decision support for entrepreneurship can be tailored to rural areas.

The new research projects will be led by the Universities of Durham, Keele, Derby, Bournemouth, Lincoln and Newcastle.

You can read more and keep up to date with progress on the research at the following link:
Researching the adapting rural economy - NICRE

Institute of Economic Development celebrates 40 year anniversary

To mark its 40th anniversary, the Institute of Economic Development will be running a programme of events and activities throughout 2023-24 business year to celebrate this significant milestone.

As well as taking a journey through time and recalling key IED people and projects dating back to 1983, the Institute aim to use this as an opportunity to celebrate the power of economic development and outline their future mission.

The IED Annual Conference and special 40th Anniversary Awards dinner will be held in Birmingham on 7th November 2023, and they will also hold a summer Westminster reception, a series of regional policy events, and a new IED podcast will see the launch of an ‘in conversation with’ series with key economic development influencers from the UK and beyond.

You can find out more at the following link:
Celebrating 40 years of the IED | IED - Institute of Economic Development

Resilience Toolkit for businesses

Research carried out by the Enterprise Research Centre, one of the NICRE’s founding university partners, shows that small and medium-sized business leaders often struggle to find time to think about future risks and to plan for them.

As a consequence, many are unprepared for a crisis when it hits. Yet it is known that firms that do engage in crisis planning are more likely to bounce back from adversity stronger than they were before.

A toolkit has been developed which encourages leaders to think about the strengths and weaknesses of their businesses and helps them to identify their greatest potential future risks. It also makes crisis planning quick and easy.

You can access the toolkit at the following link:
Resilience toolkit - NICRE

Statistical digest of rural England

Official statistics concerning rural England are published regularly by Defra. The latest August 2022 edition of the “Statistical Digest of Rural England” contains a wide range of useful statistics and is available via this link. These cover:

• Rural population & migration
• Rural Economy
• Rural living

Defra’s September 2022 “Rural Economic Bulletin” comparing high level economic indicators across rural and urban England has also been published and is available via this link. The indicators currently used are:

• claimant count – proportion of working age population claiming unemployment benefits
• economic activity – proportion of economically active population unemployed and proportion of working age population in employment
• redundancies – number of redundancies per 1,000 workers
• house prices - average house prices and annual percent change

Grants to install electric vehicle charging points at the workplace

The government’s Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) is a voucher-based scheme that provides support towards the up-front costs of the purchase and installation of electric vehicle (EV) charge-points, for eligible businesses, charities and public sector organisations.

The grant covers up to 75% of the total costs of the purchase and installation of EV charge points (inclusive of VAT), capped at a maximum of:

• £350 per socket
• 40 sockets across all sites per applicant – for instance, if you would like to install them in 40 sites, you will have 1 socket available per site

More information including application forms are available via this link.

Find information on new rules following Brexit

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has advice available for businesses following the UK’s departure from the European Union. You can access the relevant information via this link.

Broadband funding available

The Government is providing up to £210m worth of voucher funding as immediate help for people suffering from slow broadband speeds in rural areas.

Vouchers worth up to £4,500 for homes and businesses help to cover the costs of installing gigabit broadband to people’s doorsteps.

You can check whether your premises is eligible for a voucher, find a list of registered suppliers, and see those who are active in your area on the website below.

https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/

Tailored local information for Neighbourhood Planning available

A successful neighbourhood plan must be based on evidence and an understanding of the place they relate to. Communities need to gather a range of evidence and local knowledge before writing their plan. RSN has collated a selection of evidence, which may be useful to communities in starting to shape their evidence base.  This is tailored to each local authority area and is available via this link.

Chambers of Trade – keep calm and sign up!

RSN exists to enable the issues facing the rural areas of England to be identified, information and good practice to be shared and government to be challenged to address the needs and build on the opportunities which abound in rural areas. We have a number of Chambers of Trade, Commerce and Local Business Networks who are members of RSN and currently receive our bulletins.  If there is a business organisation in your area who you think would find our bulletins useful, please pass this bulletin onto them and ask them to contact Andy Dean with their contact details so we can ensure they are included in future distributions.

Future editions of the Rural Economy Spotlight

The next edition of this bulletin will be distributed in June 2023.  If you have any suggestions as to future content or would like to submit a short article for inclusion, please contact Andy Dean.