Commission for Rural Communities

Response to consultation on ‘Third sector strategy for Communities and Local Government’

The Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) has the following three main roles:

• Listening to and representing the views of rural communities
• Giving expert advice
• Acting as an independent watchdog.

Our job is to provide well-informed, independent advice to government and others to make sure that their policies reflect the real needs of people living and working in rural England.

We are pleased to respond to the CLG’s discussion paper. The two main points we wish to make are linked:

• This strategy needs to be aware of spatial differentiation, particularly, we would argue, in rural areas. In rural communities, the characteristics of the third sector are sometimes quite different from those in urban areas, including in their operation, size, access to professional support and governance arrangements.

• The strategy needs to consider and integrate the role and potential of parish and town councils and their councillors. It needs to recognize that whilst parish and town councils are formal parts of our system of ‘Local Government’, they are also and equally, in reality, integral with the local voluntary and community sector. For example, parish councillors are often involved in community roles and activities in addition to, but also integrated with, their role as a councillor.

The NCVO, in their report ‘Access all areas - meeting the needs of rural communities’ (2007), are very clear that the Third Sector can be distinctly different in many rural areas:

“Many rural VCOs have developed to fill the [service] gaps left by the public and private sector. They are often essential to the viability of rural communities.

Compared to urban areas, they tend to be small but
numerous: NCVO’s research found that proportionally more charities are located in rural areas than urban areas.

Rural VCOs also rely more heavily on the support of volunteers. Voluntary activity is high in rural communities with people more likely to volunteer than in urban areas. However the smaller populations mean that there are less people available to volunteer and the ageing volunteer base raises sustainability concerns.

Due to their small size, limited resources and rural factors such as the difficulties of reaching dispersed communities, rural VCOs may need more time and resources to build into local networks and partnerships.

They are less likely to be in contact with VCS infrastructure bodies, which can mean that their support needs are unmet.

Rural VCOs may however work closely with their parish council."

One of the conclusions we have come to is that there is a strong case for a ‘rural premium’ in relevant funding circumstances and that this needs to reflected, for example, within Compact relationships and through agreements on ‘full cost recovery’.

Another issue arising is the extent to which elected officials and public service providers ought to rely on small organisations and volunteers and on informal strong social capital processes, to fill service gaps within rural communities. We would urge some caution. There are issues arising about equity and also quality and coverage and also about risk and accountability.

Some of these differentiating features of rural society and Third Sector structures raise important questions (for CLG, for local government, regional bodies and others) about access to infrastructure support.

Larger infrastructure bodies, at all geographical levels from national to district, have a responsibility to respond to the needs of the smaller and more rural organisations in their field . Both they, and statutory bodies, also needs to connect with rural Third Sector bodies and ensure that their views are articulated within LSPs and LAAs. This can be done, for example, through connections with the  local representative bodies for the sector such as Rural  Community Councils (RCCs) and local Councils for Voluntary Service (CVSs). This is an argument made in another recent NCVO report, ‘A rural analysis of LSPs and LAAs’, 2007.

It will, therefore, be important for the Department to consider in its strategy how to make stronger links between rural communities and their supporting Third sector bodies and the LSPs and LAAs which increasingly underpin the effective provision of services to people and businesses.

These points have also been made by a variety of other commentators, including the recent report from the Carnegie Commission on rural community development (‘Charter for rural communities’, 2007). This report argues that the support needs for rural third sector bodies are different:

“However the vast majority of rural communities still have no access to skilled community development expertise. We have identified local community volunteers (of all ages), professional community development workers and other professionals working in local communities as having a vital part to play”.

The recent policy discourse on ‘community anchors’ has some distinct rural perspectives. The Community Alliance defines community anchors as “independent community-led organisations. They are multi-purpose and provide holistic solutions to local problems and challenges…. they are there for the long term, not just the quick fix”. But what does this mean within rural areas? Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) has argued that in a rural context, community anchors are often a partnership. And that they are often led by a parish or town council, but working with all the other relevant bodies, especially those owning community facilities such as village halls. ACRE also makes the case that given that financial and volunteering resources are scarce in most rural communities, (because of their smaller populations within discrete geographic communities), so competing claims to representative and community anchor roles could be divisive and unhelpful. We think these are strong arguments.

Research undertaken for us by the NCVO shows that parish and town councillors are often involved in other community activities and that they make little distinction between these activities and their official role as a councillor. They feel that they have much in common with other community activists and volunteers, as dedicated unpaid community volunteers working on behalf of their communities, (“A broader parish, working together, improving rural communities”, NCVO, 2006).

The Department needs to consider, within their strategy, the role and value and potential of parish and town councils, their councillors and their support bodies (the county associations of local councils and also the National Association of Local Councils (NALC)). An important example of the importance of this perspective is whether parish and town councils should be recipients (amongst others) of asset transfers and of capacity building support to assist with such transfers. We believe that in principle, they should.

In conclusion, the CLG needs to work through how its proposed Third Sector strategy will help the role and effectiveness of Third Sector organisations in rural England. For example, how will rural Third Sector interests be articulated and represented on the CLG’s Third Sector Partnership Board?

The Department should also be encouraged to consider what responses to this consultation it either receives from rural Third Sector bodies or which raise rural issues and circumstances.

We would argue that the Department needs to engage closely with organisations such as ACRE, representing RCCs, the NALC (representing the parish and town councils) as well as a range of other bodies such as the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA), Action for Market Towns and the Development Trusts Association.

Commission for Rural Communities
July 2007