Rural Community Gateway

by Geoff Fagan

'A Charter for Rural Communities' is a useful document that has gathered together a number of key themes associated with rural development.

It specifies a more adequate engagement of local people in the improvement of their quality of life, an adjustment to their relationship with government and lends pointers to an increased local vibrancy. Its purpose is to drive the policy and practice agenda: to engage key stakeholders in a reassessment of their commitment to rural development.

This research took three years to complete and cost three million pounds and held the potential to make a truly substantial impact on rural development thinking over the next decade.

The Commission, through their data gathering teams, identified ten interrelated characteristics for a dynamic, vibrant, engaged and sustainable rural community (pg 15). These were: identifying, utilising and optimising assets; achieving fairness for everyone; empowering local governance; increasing resources for community benefit, enriching social capital; valuing local distinctiveness; developing reliable infrastructure, enhancing environmental capacity and supporting a dynamic and local economy.

The key question therefore is, if a community development worker had sat down for an afternoon with a small group of local people in a village hall somewhere (anywhere) in the Highlands three years ago – would they not have identified the same list, without the need for such astonishing expenditure?

Perhaps this is unfair because what this really expensive research programme should have been able to do was provide the evidence in justification for its recommendations. It’s a pity then that the final report singularly fails to back up its reported findings with any reference to evidence.

We know that a small army of researchers went out to talk to a variety of rural groups across the UK and Ireland, but, for some strange reason they fail to provide the evidence for what they found. The report relies instead on presenting ‘Ideas for Action’ and recommendations as if they just have to be believed almost as if they are commonsense. Even the descriptors that accompany the Ideas for Action are so brief that it is impossible to see where they are located and what the basis is for their inclusion.

There was also a doubt created as to whether the recommendations applied to all five regions of the British Isles or just to some – or mainly to England. The Quirk report, for example, applies only to England and Wales yet it would seem that its Findings are applied in a general sense across Ireland and Scotland.

There was also no discussion as to the cost to communities of taking on the management of substantial physical assets. There was no discussion as to whether this movement to local control was being supported by central and local government because it held the potential for much lower costs to a local authority – with substantial and long-term burdens being accepted, perhaps naively, by local people. This debate is a critical component of the community asset argument and was worthy of inclusion. 

There was a need in the report for a more critical relationship towards notions such as community asset transfer and sustainability. If local councils have failed to provide long-term support for village halls even though they have access to millions of pounds through the Council Tax – why would a local group be able to do a better job of sustaining the building and growing the programme, in the absence of tax-based funding?

There was much potential in this study for the Commission to take a radical look at the way that rural communities are financed. There was nothing reported on the desirability or otherwise of communities taking on commercial loans that would need to be serviced by their children and grandchildren.

Nothing was reported on the support of rural eBusiness growth as one of the key elements of local sustainability which might enable remote communities to engage, on a level playing field, with their urban competitors.

There was nothing, either, on new models of rural entrepreneurship – with Community Trusts playing significantly different and more energised roles than local organisations have in the past. There was nothing reported on the Social Return on Investment – and its relationship to Government.

The report also failed to interrogate the local within the national or strategic, yet it boldly talks of an increase in political structures at the local level and then makes the imaginative leap that an increase in representative structures will somehow increase participation rates. How does that follow?

Lastly, there was surely the potential for the research to interrogate the notion of an ‘Enabling State’ in rural development and to address and perhaps counter the metropolitan trickle-down mentality that seems to hold sway at the moment. What a pity these critical areas were missed.

Without the evidence being included to support its recommendations the report is less useful than it could and should have been. The residual feeling left is one of mild disappointment. This was a major research exercise, perhaps the biggest and most expensive study conducted in the rural community, ever. There was a need for the Commission to point the way to the future from the basis of sound, unchallengeable evidence. The report is useful and will spark interest and debate – but at three million pounds I think we could have expected so much more from this talented and well connected team.

What do you think?

Let us know what you think about A Charter for Rural Communities and Geoff Fagan's review by going to the bottom of this article and adding a comment.

About Geoff Fagan

Geoff Fagan is the Project Director of CADISPA and a senior lecturer in the Department of Community Education at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.

His research interests include Local Agenda 21; sustainability and community development; capacity building; and popular education. His teaching at the University is tied into the research and includes community development; education and group work; and empowerment.

Other articles written by Geoff Fagan

Ask an expert: Geoff Fagan (Part 1)
Ask an expert: Geoff Fagan (Part 2)
Geoff Fagan reports on community engagement seminar

Links

Charter for Rural Communities to be reviewed
Download A Charter for Rural Communities
Three million? Not likely! Carnegie's Charter was "tremendous value for money"
Pip Tabor reviews A Charter for Rural Communities
Local People Leading review Charter for Rural Communities
Scottish Crofting Foundation review Charter for Rural Communities
Frank Burns reviews Charter for Rural Communities

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