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One North East has invited seven rural partnerships to develop detailed plans to shape how at least £4.5m of European funding will be used to regenerate rural areas of North East England over the next three years.
They’ve been named as the successful groups from an expressions of interest exercise to find areas that could benefit from the so-called new LEADER approach – which will be used to deliver part of the new Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE).
LEADER is a community led, ‘bottom up’ approach to rural development in areas of poor economic performance or deprivation, and is seen by the European Commission, regional development agency and DEFRA as an important way of tackling rural needs.
LEADER involves broad-based community partnerships – made up of the public sector, local businesses, land managers, local voluntary groups, and local residents – in developing a regeneration strategy for their area, called a Local Development Strategy.
These Local Action Groups will then decide on investment priorities and on the allocation of RDPE cash to different projects.
The successful groups from this initial stage now have until the end of February to produce their Local Development Strategies, after which they will formally propose them to One North East’s Leader Selection Panel which is overseeing the process for the region
The successful groups are:
- For the Tees Valley - Tees Valley Rural Community Council and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council have been invited to produce a joint strategy, with encouragement for collaboration with North York Moors National Park
- For the North Pennines - Teesdale and Wear Valley Local Strategic Partnership have been invited to work with North
- Pennines Plus on a joint strategy
- For County Durham - Durham Rural Community Council
- For the Northumberland coast - Northumberland Coast AONB
- For the Northumberland uplands – Northumberland National Park Authority
Rural and environment manager at One North East, Frances Rowe, said: “New LEADER means regeneration led by the community, trying out new ideas to address their particular local needs. The expressions of interest stage was the first part of the process to identify areas and groups to go forward. We’ll be working with all the groups over the coming months to develop their ideas and strategies, and are making cash available to help them with this task.
“We’re particularly pleased that we’ve had a real spread of applications across the region – which means that areas which haven’t yet had funding through LEADER may well get to try this approach.
“Ultimately, LEADER will be used to invest a considerable amount of money into rural regeneration – at least £1.5m for each year of the RDPE – so the Local Development Strategies are really important in making sure that investment has the greatest impact for the rural economy and for rural communities.”
A final selection panel is likely to be held in March to formally decide which groups which will be invited to deliver RDPE through the new LEADER approach.
For more information, contact Claire Mason (press office) on 0191 229 6429 / 07765220755 or email Claire.mason@onenortheast.co.uk
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