A new report highlights the potential to double the economic output of rural areas in the UK.

Dr. Stuart Burgess, the Government's rural advocate and chairman of the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) has handed the Prime Minister his report on releasing the potential of England’s rural economies.

The report follows a request from the Prime Minister to the rural advocate to investigate ways in which rural economies might be strengthened in the wake of flooding and foot and mouth disease incidents in 2007.

Dr. Burgess said that in his visits to rural areas he was constantly reminded how enterprising rural people are and what diversity of successful firms and resilient communities we have.

His report records their economic strengths and the substantial contribution they already make to the nation’s economic performance.

He added, however, that there was scope for significant improvement, and said that for some communities this would only come from better support.

Rural areas host around 30 per cent of England’s businesses. In 2005 these earned at least £325 billion.

A similar proportion of firms located throughout England, not just in villages and rural towns, earned higher levels of turnover, however, showing that rural economies have a further potential for growth.

The report suggests this unfulfilled potential from rural firms might be around £236 to £347 billion per annum.

By lifting the performance, especially of medium and larger firms in rural areas, by attracting more investment, by strengthening the capacity to innovate, they could perhaps double their economic contribution.

This could help reduce unemployment and poverty in rural areas, close the persistent gap between rural and urban wages and make more rural communities resilient against future economic and environmental shocks.

Practical proposals 

The report sets out a package of practical proposals for coordinating government activity to improve areas of support for and development of people and enterprises in the rural business sector in order for this potential to be realised.

These include the creation of a rural finance forum to examine and overcome the causes of lower capital investment, poorer access to finance, and lower funding for rural economic initiatives and the creation of a rural innovation initiative to address the special challenges and opportunities in sparse or remote rural areas.

The development of new forms of brokerage, networks and clusters could improve access to employee and business support programmes and share good practice.

A new compact between government, insurance and rural industries could improve response to shocks caused by disease and bad weather and develop new insurance products.

Dr. Burgess said that at the heart of any drive for improvements would be better understanding of the scale and performance of rural economies from business and city leaders, economic departments and agencies.

“This is why I have also recommended that the government convenes a national summit and sponsors a series of regional summits to focus attention and activity of government and its agencies on releasing the potential of rural economies,” he added.

Examples of outstanding rural business 

He said that he would now look forward to government ─ nationally, regionally and locally ─ being inspired to seize this compelling opportunity and focus coordinated efforts on the needs of rural entrepreneurs, businesses, employees and residents, not just for the benefit of rural England but the entire nation.

In Dr. Burgess’ report a number of examples of outstanding rural business are highlighted, such as the village of Broughton in Yorkshire which has won recognition for transforming a declining agricultural community into a beacon of rural enterprise.

Rural England is also seeing a boom in home-working, healthy rates of new business start-ups, high levels of entrepreneurship - where levels among women are much higher than the national average - and the growth of small firms in new business activities.

Full report: England's rural areas: steps to release their economic potential

Share this: digg   del.ico.us   Newsvine   Reddit   Furl   technorati   Facebook

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Name (required)

Email (required) (not published)

Website

Title

POST

By posting on this website you are agreeing to abide by our website comment policy and all posts are subject to the approval of the website editor. We will remove posts that contain offensive or threatening language, personal attacks on the writer or other posters, posts that are off topic and posts that are considered spam or specifically used to promote any commercial products or services. Any poster who repeatedly contravenes the policy will be banned from posting on the website.