A business service delivered by Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency since 2002 has been shortlisted for a national planning award.
The Royal Town Planning Institute makes its Awards each year and the Cumbria Rural Planning Facilitation Service (RPFS) has been shortlisted for the RTPI Rural Areas and the Natural Environment Award for 2008.
“The aim of the RPFS programme is to offer advice to businesses before they submit a planning application for a development,” explains Lynne Fox, Business Support and Planning Manager at CREA. “Our network of planning experts has a huge amount of past experience and can highlight the potential pitfalls as well as the strengths of an idea. They ensure that anyone with a proposal to develop their business which may need planning permission such as wanting to change the use of a farm building or create a new work space is aware in advance of all their options and of any planning issues that will affect their ideas.”
Since the pilot in 2001/02, RPFS has worked with over 1140 businesses across rural Cumbria and a review in 2005 led to a further three years of funding, through to 2009, from the Northwest Regional Development Agency.
“The RTPI Award would be a great encouragement for our team of advisers,” says Bob Clark, Chief Executive of CREA, “and the stamp of approval for a practical approach that has helped many Cumbrian businesses to develop successfully over the past six years.”
|
