The Manifesto
The Lancashire Rural Delivery Pathfinder Outcome Manifesto - has been written by members of the Task Group.
- Lancashire Rural Delivery Pathfinder - Outcome Manifesto (size 110kb)
- Lancashire Rural Delivery Pathfinder - Outcome Manifesto (size 176kb)
The Manifesto reflects the findings of the Task Group in that:
Pathfinder has enabled us to develop a real sense of understanding of the issues facing rural communities, and the inherent challenges in achieving the strong and prosperous communities, which are at the heart of Government policy objectives.
Through Pathfinder we have come to believe that strong and prosperous rural communities are those, which balance competing interests in order to provide equity of choice and opportunity to all. We have found that to achieve this balance requires:
- Cultural and organisational change at national, regional and local levels in order to remove silos of operation and join up public sector intervention both vertically and horizontally
- Process changes in a variety of areas, especially engagement with the planning process and funding mechanisms, a greater engagement and two way dialogue at local level, and enhanced reality checks of local service planning (i.e. through Local Area Agreements)
A greater, more proactive knowledge and understanding of structural and short-term issues to address the rapidly changing nature of both rurality and locality
In order to address these findings the Task Group have developed a series of headline recommendations.
They are as follows:
a. The development of a sophisticated public service tasking framework (to include all Government departments and their agencies) is essential to achieve an equitable level of public service provision in rural areas. Such a framework must recognise that the added cost of delivering services in rural areas (‘rural premium’) is a barrier to social inclusion and service equity and that directing service delivery needs to become more flexible and ‘local’. The development of local public service standards will make this real at the local level and could form the basis for the development of Local Charters.
b. An improved understanding of evolution and change resulting from the interaction of market forces and policy within rural communities (in terms of economy, community, environment, housing and service accessibility); and of the role and responsibilities of public sector organisations and agencies in relation to this change, is fundamental to achieving strong, prosperous and balanced rural communities.
c. Embedding rural service delivery within mainstream public service delivery (and so not continue to rely on temporary grant interventions) will require the development of effective practical ‘rural proofing’ tools which are usable and attractive to service delivery managers.
d. The development of a usable dataset and impact assessment tool will help to inform service delivery decision making by enabling targeting and performance monitoring of organisational delivery via Local Area Agreements / Local public service standards / Local Charters.
e. Decision making/taking affecting rural communities must be improved by balancing the identified needs and aspirations of a community with relevant strategic priorities and societal interests. This means effectively linking local community planning to Community Strategies and therefore sub-regional and regional strategy and policy developments.
f. All stakeholders should work to build a positive local attitude towards change in rural areas particularly where development will maintain and secure balanced rural communities.