Natural England

Rural Service Standards (AP03/02)

FOR DECISION

Background

1.   In November 2000, in its Rural White Paper, Our Countryside: the future.   A fair deal for rural England, the Government set out the Rural Services Standard - the minimum standards people should expect in terms of access to public services in rural areas.   The aim was:

Ÿ         to give people living in the countryside a better understanding of the access to services they can expect

Ÿ         to update the standards over time as the modernisation of public services proceeded and rural access was improved

Relevant powers or duties

2.   The Rural White Paper charged the Countryside Agency to keep the Rural Services Standard under review and report annually on progress with developing the standards and assess where further work was needed.

Progress

3.  Rural Services Standard -   First progress report 2001/02 established a background against which the services could be monitored and against which change could be measured.   It assessed whether the standard had been met and where further work was needed.   The report was published in August 2002 at the same time as Defra’s Rural Services Standard 2002 which updated some of the existing standards and introduced new standards for access to broadband in schools and Inland Revenue advice, together with telephone helplines and access to information through websites.   

4.   Annex A shows progress against the standards set in 2002.   Where standards are easily measurable, targets are being met or good progress is being made towards achieving them.   For others we are working with departments on better collection and provision of statistics which will enable us to monitor progress more effectively.

5.   There is now a greater degree of clarity about where responsibility for rural issues lies and we have developed good relations with contacts across government departments in our work to try and refine existing standards and develop new ones.   For example, DfES and the Agency are working jointly on mapping and evaluating Capital Modernisation Funded rural UK Online centres, together with a mapping exercise across all 6,000 UK Online centres to identify which centres are located in rural wards.   A final report is due at the end of March with a joint publication of the report and good practice case studies planned for July.

6.   However, there are some general issues that are becoming apparent from the results of the monitoring process.

Ÿ         Many of the standards are national and concern basic entitlements to services which should be available to all whether they live in rural or urban areas.   Rather than attempt to develop a specific rural standard, which would not in any case fit all rural circumstances, in our view we should aim to ensure that appropriate ways of delivering the service in rural areas are in place (e.g. mobile provision, joint provision of services, outreach, satellite) or at least are being considered.

Ÿ         Some targets are set and agreed at local level, e.g. local care charters, police response times, making it difficult to introduce a common rural standard.     As a first step we intend to collect this local information, establish if these local targets are being met, consider any justification for local variation and identify the barriers to a national standard.   We also intend to pilot regional reports in one or two regions, depending on the availability of data.  

Ÿ         Departments use different definitions of ‘rural’ in order to collect data.   For example, the Department of Health uses shire counties when making assessments of rural performance against targets for social services.   Post Office Limited has classified as rural a settlement with a population of 10,000 and under in carrying out their review of the urban post office network.    The work currently being carried out by the Agency, Defra, ODPM and the Office of National Statistics on developing a consistent way of defining rural areas will help to overcome this problem.

Ÿ         Where standards are concerned with telephone and electronic access to information, the only information we are likely to be able to access is on the number of hits on websites or caller volumes so it is not possible to get an idea of rural/urban usage.   There are also issues of confidentiality to consider.     We have asked departments to consider what useful data might be provided, but are not overly optimistic this will be available. We could consider asking departments to run user surveys as a means of gauging this or we could run them ourselves.   Even where services are provided by telephone or electronically, there will be instances where people will still prefer face to face contact and this is likely to be more difficult for people living in rural areas.   User satisfaction is more difficult to gauge.

New standards

7.   We are working closely with Defra in reviewing Rural Services Standard 2002 to ensure that it is up to date, to refine existing standards and examine the scope for developing new ones for Rural Services Standard 2003.   We have had a series of annual review meetings with Defra and other relevant departments to discuss this and have identified two possible new standards for 2003.

·        DfES -   Extended Plus schools:   By 2006 all rural LEAs to have at least one Extended Plus school (i.e. one offering a core of services including health and social care, childcare, study support, adult education and family learning, ICT access and arts and sports facilities).   

·        Department for Transport- a commitment to delivering vehicle licensing online by 2005.   The Board may want to consider whether it wishes to press for other improvements.

8.   Defra has also consulted the Rural Affairs Forum on the Rural Services Standard 2003 through their online Learning Network, asking for suggestions for which standards members of the Forum would like to see reviewed and for new areas that might be covered.   The National Youth Agency (NYA) has commented that the experience of young people is not sufficiently taken into account.   Young people are referred to in relation to schooling and as a potential work area for Connexions, but NYA believe the experience of young people should be reflected more broadly across the Standard.   NYA have offered to work with Defra and the Agency to remedy this.   This fits with the increased priority that the Agency is giving to the needs of young people as part of its work on services and addressing disadvantage.   NYA has suggested standards relating to the percentage of youth population within a safe, 30 minute journey to youth work provision and electronic access to youth information, but these need to be discussed further.

9.   The following provisional ideas are being considered for further refinement of the Standard from 2004:

·        DWP - Pensions Service.     A possible standard related to the roll-out of regional Pension Centres and the need to ensure that there is adequate coverage of rural areas through partnership arrangements with, for example, Age Concern, local authorities, welfare rights service.

·        DWP - Jobcentre Plus.   A possible standard related to a new service delivery model which is being developed as part of the national roll-out.   The model will adopt a partnership approach, concentrating on local partnership arrangements, and the use of community transport to make facilities accessible especially where rationalisation is under consideration.   The Agency will be consulted.

·        DoH- There is scope for developing a new standard based on DoH’s PSA to reduce health inequalities.   It could cover, for example, access to health screening services and ante-natal health services.

·        DfES- A UK online standard relating to the minimum range of services available at centres

Proposals for future work

10.   We propose that our priorities for the coming year should be:

Ÿ         completion of the work on identifying an indicator of likely need against formal public and private sector childcare provision.   This has been delayed because DfES were unable to provide accurate data, but the project will resume in April 2003 by which time OFSTED will have completed their validation of the data. (September 2003)

Ÿ         completion of work begun in November 2002 on the evaluation of Capital Modernisation Fund supported rural UK Online centres, and the production of a report and good practice guide. (July 2003)

Ÿ         consider how to assess the impact of the Rural Services Standard on the users of local services to establish whether they are making a difference to rural communities.

Ÿ         pilot regional Rural Services Standard reports in one or two regions, depending on the availability of data. (December 2003)

Ÿ         work with government departments on developing more focused, rurally sensitive standards, for example, with DoH on a new standard related to their health inequalities PSA.  

Ÿ         undertake a mapping exercise, using postcoded data, to identify locations of Community Legal Services Partnerships to identify gaps in provision.   (September 2003)

Ÿ         investigate ways of identifying key rural post office branches necessary for maintaining accessibility of services and explore other ways of delivering services, taking account of the most vulnerable groups in order to address closures of rural post offices (this is also related to the access to cash element of   Defra’s PSA).

Ÿ         work with Post Office Limited as they develop innovative and more flexible ways of providing post office services in rural areas (e.g., multi-service outlets, mobile offices and co-location of post offices and other public services).

Ÿ         Undertake user surveys to monitor the rural use of helplines and websites.

Financial and manpower consequences

11.   The work is contained within the current Corporate Plan and Business Plans.

Next steps

12.   A second Rural Services Standard progress report will be produced, for publication in July 2003.   It will follow a similar format to the first progress report, with a table indicating results measured against Rural Services Standard 2002, together with an introduction, a note on progress, issues arising, an indication of future work and priorities and conclusions.   Defra would like the Agency to publish the report alongside their own update of the Standard.   This was the approach adopted last year but it resulted in a low profile for our report, making our engagement of partners more difficult.   There may, therefore, be a case for separating the two.  

Risks and mitigation measures

13.        The main risk continues to be that the data to monitor the standards is not available or is not in a form which is easily usable.   The Agency’s work on rural definitions will help clarify boundaries and rural proofing by departments is increasing their commitment to produce usable data.