A business service delivered by Cumbria Rural Enterprise Agency (CREA) that has helped almost 2000 small businesses since 2002 has won a national planning award. Delegates from Cumbria were in London to accept the Award on Thursday (5 February).
The Royal Town Planning Institute represents the planning profession throughout the UK and Ireland and makes its Awards each year. The Cumbria Rural Planning Facilitation Service (RPFS) was shortlisted for the RTPI Rural Areas and the Natural Environment Award. The Service had already won the Northwest regional award and so hopes were high for national recognition of its practical approach to helping businesses to negotiate the planning laws and processes that affect rural development.
Presenting the Award, RTPI President Martin Willey said: “This scheme has proved an easily deliverable, value for money, transferable tool for supporting sustainable development in rural areas. As a successful experiment in mediation in planning, it could well provide a model for similar schemes elsewhere.”
“We were thrilled to win our category,” said Lynne Fox, Business Support and Planning Manager at CREA. “The aim of the RPFS programme is to offer advice to businesses before they submit a planning application for a development. Our network of planning experts highlights the potential pitfalls as well as the strengths of an idea. The Service means that business owners have free access to this resource of expertise and practical experience before they approach the authorities and they are made aware in advance of all their options and of any planning issues that will affect their ideas.”
The need for a planning support service of this kind for rural areas was put to the Prime Minister by the Northwest Regional Development Agency on his “north-south-divide” visit and endorsed by Number 10 in “Action for Farming” in the spring of 2000. The Rural Planning Facilitation Service (RPFS) was then initiated. CREA managed the pilot schemes in Cumbria and Lancashire while the NWDA funded the pilot and then roll-out of the initiative across three counties.
John Dunning, CREA President and a champion of the Planning Facilitation Service from the start, was one of those who travelled down to London for the Awards ceremony: “Planning is an important control and guide in rural areas but it can sometimes be a barrier to the diversification that our rural economy needs. The RPFS has had an impressive impact in enabling and encouraging rural businesses to meet the challenges of growth while meeting the valid requirements of our landscape and contributing to improvement in the built environment.”
Since the pilot, RPFS has acted as a mediation service for rural development with almost 1200 businesses across rural Cumbria as well as more than 500 in Lancashire and over 200 in Cheshire. CREA works with partners, South Cheshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry and, in Lancashire, Rural Futures, to provide the mediation between rural businesses and local authorities across rural Northwest England.
The RPFS advisers are experienced planning officers and consultants who deliver free advice to farmers and small businesses contemplating a business initiative that may require planning consent. Their early advice can avoid abortive attempts to put forward inappropriate proposals and local planning authorities have welcomed the scheme as it ensures that only well-prepared proposals are brought forward.
“A national RTPI Award to add to the Northwest one is a great achievement and also a real encouragement for our team of advisers,” said Bob Clark, Chief Executive of CREA. “The judges particularly commented on the value of our practical approach that has helped many Cumbrian businesses to develop successfully over the past seven years. In spite of the commercial doom and gloom, small businesses in rural Cumbria are still keen to grow and develop but they need the support of schemes like this to make sure that any money they spend has the highest return possible, as soon as possible.”
David Hunter, Head of Rural Development at the NWDA, said: "The Planning Facilitation Service has been an innovative initiative and a worthy winner. I'd like to offer my congratulations to our partners in making it such a success. NWDA recognised back in 2000 that businesses can find planning issues a complex matter. In response, we helped to design and fund a pioneering service for rural businesses that has now provided expert advice to many businesses across the northwest, helping them to develop and to thrive. I am pleased to see this hard work recognised through both the regional award and the national prize.”
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