Rural fair share unveiled

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By Jane Taylor

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Nine months after the launch of the original Fair Scheme, the Community Fund and Countryside Agency announced their new joint rural fair share pro-gramme for England in late November, called ‘Countryside Communities’.

As with Fair Share, this is a targeted scheme, designed to rectify low lottery funding levels in rural areas. There are some differences, however. Because this initiative came solely from the Community Fund, rather than government, it is only CF funding (not all lottery board funding) that has been taken into account. After discussion with the Countryside Agency, CF drew up its list of most disadvantaged districts using the IMD2000 rank of ‘average of ward scores’, rather than the ‘extent’ ranking used for the main Fair Share. This, CF says, was intended both to remove the population density bias of the extent ranking whilst retaining a weighting for deprivation, which indicators such as ‘access’ do not do.

The Countryside Agency advised on which authorities qualified as ‘rural’; the rest were stripped from the ranking, and CF then analysed which of the remaining names had received more than its median level of funding. Of the under-funded areas, the following eight came top

CF’s cash commitment to Countryside Communities is £10m (part of the lump sum set by for the original Fair Share scheme). The figures in the table above, however, represent indicative allocations which include approx £8m of this ‘new’ money plus the amounts that the Community Fund calculates it would in any case have been spending in these areas over the coming period. Note also, that these projections are for five years, taking us up to 2007, rather than the main Fair Share scheme, which runs until 2005. Clearly this allows the cash to be spread a bit more thinly. The remaining £2.2m of the £10m pot is to go towards strategic grants aimed at capacity building in rural localities. CF and Countryside Agency have not yet worked out what kinds of projects might qualify, but would be open to appropriate proposals, directed to the CF’s Strategic Grants committee.

This is an England-only programme: CF in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are satisfied that their funding of rural areas is at an acceptable level. CF also stresses that Countryside Communities allocations will be directed to the localities within each area which are suffering rural deprivation, rather than be absorbed at district level. The role of the Countryside Agency in the delivery of the scheme remains hazy. David Atkinson of the agency’s rural services branch, says ‘We’ll be working at national and local level to ensure a range of funding is accessed.’ The agency has a handful of programmes (mostly lottery funded) that are aimed at capacity building or community development, such as Vital Villages, Local Heritage Initiative, the Market Towns Initiative and Doorstep Greens. The agency and the Community Fund have drawn up a ‘compact’ setting out the basis for their partnership work on the scheme, under which there will be initial discussions between CF and CA regional staffs about their localities’ needs, from which a strategy and pattern of support is expected to emerge.