To:       Commission for Rural Communities From:  Hampshire Association of Parish and Town Councils Date:   14 February 2007 Response submitted via CRC website ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE PLACE OF ‘RURAL’ WITHIN CENTRAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT The Association welcomes the opportunity to respond to the CRC’s Paper to DEFRA. Page 1           The Association supports the Commission’s Roles, if they deliver real differences to the taxpayer, within a reasonable time-frame. Page 3           The Paper outlined the formation of Natural England as a single integrated body for integrated resource management.  The Association would ask if other bodies were abolished, in forming this new one?  It also hopes that small self-funding innovative bodies such as those in Hampshire including the Hampshire Water Partnership are listened to and supported.  Those local partnerships are making far more difference than the complexity of national Quangos which simply in the past have failed to deliver ‘the difference’.   The Association would also enquire into the links with regional plans from Natural England’s work.  Currently, the South East Plan does not give confidence that infrastructure will be put in place before the massive swathes of house building promised.  The Association rejects entirely any more house-building prior to infrastructure provision. Page 9           The Association regrets that SEEDA channels it’s work primarily through the County Council and rural community council (which isn’t a council!), in Hampshire.  Page 10         The Association regrets that SEEDA has not channelled its ‘Access to Services’ programme through the County Association.  Too much reliance continues to be placed upon the rural community council (not a council!).  However, the Association agrees with the statement that central government as well as RDAs need to be looking at this issue.  For example, the Association is curious as to what happened to Mr Prescott’s  transport  network promises of 1997? Page 13         The Association’s policy is to support the abolition of Regional Assemblies.  County Associations of first-tier councils must also be more involved in policy-making.  Currently, the National Association is not properly representing member views. Page 15         The Association is not confident of Local Area Agreements being coherent enough to ‘rural proof’ policy.  LSPs are diverse across the county of Hampshire, are not always representative of their residents, and do not link coherently to the LAA.  The Association would support less government initiatives, and less government interference.  The amount of consultation papers in recent weeks has been enormous; no capacity to support them has been offered. Page 16         The Association is a strong supporter of the Rural Pathfinder programme. Page 17         The Commission should note that the Director of the Association, and not the RCC, is the Chairman of the Hampshire RSC programme.  Government’s continuing support of RCC’s against it’s pointed lack of support to CALCs is well noted.  It is hoped that this situation changes in the future.  When the Commission states that pooling into the LAA was agreed for the RSC funding, this is not true – we were just told.  This is hardly ‘an agreement’. Page 18         The Commission should recognise that money given to NALC does not necessarily help parish councils with their work.  The Hampshire Association would welcome a flow of funding from DEFRA to ourselves via  NALC – any tangible signs of this in the 06/07 financial year are missing to date. Generally, the Paper is a useful discussion document.  There are however several small but important misconceptions as outlined above.  To keep its credibility, the Commission will need to be clear in its understanding and language.     S M LuggDirectorOn behalf of the Executive Committee14/02/07

Many thanks for your detailed comments Steven. We have been invited to speak on this paper at the Committee for Rural Hampshire's meeting in July, so I look forward to exploring some of your comments and issues in more detail with you and others then.