Rural Development
The NWDA’s role in rural development is to realise the economic
potential of the rural Northwest by focusing on three areas:
- Improving the productivity of businesses and growing the market
for goods and services from rural areas
- Growing the size and capability of the workforce
- Creating and maintaining the conditions for sustainable
growth
How we go about achieving this is set out in our rural policy,
Building on Potential in our Rural Areas.
As new economic opportunities arise, it is important that the
rural workforce is skilled and flexible enough to be able to
exploit those opportunities to their full potential. This can only
be done by a well-trained workforce.
The NWDA offer a full range of business advice and services to
help support fledgling businesses as well as helping established
businesses to invest in technologies and business practices. The
Food & Drink sector is one of the Agency’s key sectors we
support.
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Growing the market and the workforce is not enough to give rural
businesses and rural communities long-term support. Growth must be
sustainable or it will present problems for our rural areas in the
future. Rural sustainability is a key element of the NWDA’s role in
rural development.
The NWDA’s rural development role is split into a number of
elements:
- Influencing within NWDA, across the region through partnership
working, and at the national level by contributing to the
development of strategic policy
- Developing actions that will directly deliver our strategic
priorities for rural areas
- Direct delivery and partnership working - where appropriate, we
directly commission strategic activity to deliver our rural
priorities, but we will also work with partners to deliver activity
sub-regionally
Sub-Regional Partnerships not only help define priorities at a
sub-regional level, they also deal with regional issues at a
sub-regional level. Where possible, rural issues are dealt with
through mainstream sub-regional programmes, so additional funding
complements sub-regional activity, rather than duplicating it.
Rural Funding
Historically, the NWDA has supported rural development through
the Government’s Single Budget. Now the NWDA also manages an
additional element of rural funding - the Rural Development
Programme for England (RDPE). The NWDA is responsible for
administering and directing RDPE funding in our region.
The NWDA will be investing £9.8 million from the Single Budget
into rural development between 2009 and 2012. This is in addition
to: standard sub-regional funding; RDPE funding; and funding
available for the region’s businesses including rural
businesses.
Between 2003 and 2008, the NWDA delivered the Rural Renaissance
Regional Recovery Plan, investing over £100 million in the region’s
rural areas. The work included establishing Cumbria Vision
Sub-Regional Partnership and completing the Market Towns
Initiative.
Both the RDPE fund and the NWDA’s current funding initiative
were launched in 2008.
(For more information on the regeneration of our countryside and
green infrastructure, see improving the
countryside and land regeneration.)