Natural England

Vital Villages: an interim report of performance and findings – where next? (AP03/26)

1.   The Vital Villages programme comprises four main strands, three of which were announced in the Rural White Paper ‘Our countryside: the future a fair deal for rural England’ backed by new resources for the Agency.    These were: Parish Plans; Community Services and Parish Transport.   The fourth element was the expanded Rural Transport Partnership. 

2.   In February 2001 (AP01/01) the Board agreed the objectives and outputs for the Vital Villages programme, an outline work programme and risk assessment, and three year targets and outcomes.

3.   With the emergence of Public Service Agreements last year, all four of the

Vital Villages grant streams are specifically cited as contributing to DEFRA PSA targets, most notably on tansport. 

Performance Review (1st April 2001 – 31st March 2003)

4.   Consultants have monitored and evaluated the programme against its goals since its inception.   They report annually and a critical third year report will focus on evaluation.  

5.   Two years in, our performance can be summarised as good, but with areas for improvement and development.   Overall we remain on course to meet our three year targets and, in some cases, exceed them.   The programme is very popular with communities and demand is greater than the resources we have available.   It is the aspect of the Agency’s work with which most MPs will have come into some sort of contact, and perhaps the only contact. In our national role we have helped developed the capacity of the voluntary sector in support of communities and have facilitated much stronger links between communities and their local authorities and service providers.   The programme has never been just about the effective and efficient delivery of grants.   Grants were a means to an end, not just an end in themselves.   Has the programme developed communities’ capacity for self help?   Has it led to more activity?   Have more people got involved, beyond the usual suspects?   Annex 1 sets out a summary of the performance of the programme in its first two years.   It confirms that effectiveness needs to be judged in the light of the in-depth evaulation of completed projects scheduled for year 3.   It suggests we need to ensure more of our grants reach the most needy communities.   Thirdly, it highlights the need to take what we learned as evidence to influence others’ agendas and policies eg ‘Wheels to work’.  

What have we learnt so far from Vital Villages?

6.   Annex II sets out the lessons learnt to date.   In summary:

·         small grants can build social capital (the social networks and human resources that are present in any community that lead to action);   but

·         to build empowered, active and inclusive communities you need to invest in building the capacity of others and ensure the necessary professional and technical support is available;

·         there is a need for a simple, responsive, devolved, government programme that allows local communities to decide on their priorities and find local solutions: local decisions and solutions are taken in a national framework,

·            it is possible to operate a national scheme, delivered both regionally and locally in a very cost effective way (i.e. <10% running costs) with quick turnaround times (15 days – average turnaround is 7-10 days) and minimal paperwork and risk;

·         it takes communities time to engage, especially those most in need:   so,

·         there needs to be a commitment to funding of up to six years (at least for communities not benefitting early in the scheme), not only to ensure effective evaluation and feedback, but also to make the lessons learnt from Vital Villages stick across the country to then be able to hand on successful programmes;   and 

·         we need to build into such programmes more immediate and responsive feedback from grant recipients to ensure policies and programmes for rural communities are customer driven;

·       the Agency delivering Vital Villages has enabled it to be more than a grants programme, linking research, experimental, demonstration and innovative solutions to improve delivery to meet consumer needs

·       the popularity and demand for the Vital Villages programme means we need to keep very close to our partners and customers in order to manage any changes in direction or withdrawals/exits. 

A new direction for Vital Villages ?

7.   We are just two years in to what was envisaged as a six year programme.   But it was always intended that we should keep adjusting our programme in the light of the in-year monitoring (monthly, with six-monthly reports); customer feedback and changing context (both political and resources).

8.   The Vital Villages programme was, from the outset, designed to be a ‘brand’ (in marketing terms) under which the Agency would pilot, demonstrate and, if appropriate, run programmes of work to achieve the outcome of empowered, active and inclusive communities.   The principle was to keep the Vital Villages brand, but to change the nature and range of products (grants) we tested under the brand, exiting from particular aspects of the programme when our job was done and handing them on, if appropriate.   Vital Villages refers to the policy and advisory work as much as to the grant scheme and communications database.

9.   We also need to consider how to fine tune the direction of the Vital Villages programme, flagging up new ‘products’ which would be brought forward with appropriate business cases through the normal corporate plan process.   Given that we are only two years into a six year programme, the Board is invited to offer steers on the broad direction intended, rather than to agree what, in some areas (eg new schemes to test and demonstrate), are ideas for futher development.   Our ideas are :-  

§        A national programme of rural community consultants/champions.   Drawing from the success of the existing Vital Villages grants we might to identify community leaders and champions who possess the skills, experience and knowledge to then work with others to transfer their skills and knowledge.   This programme would focus on developing a national network/movement, building the capacity in those areas of most need and would include a national coverage with training, assessment, establishment and management of learning network etc. This would link with the cross cutting review on capacity building 

·         Run a national demonstration youth programme of how to engage with young people, from governance to action, building upon the lessons from our current research and modest demonstration work on young people in A2

·         Pilot sustainable communities at the lowest local level in selected areas where Parish Plans have been completed and demonstrate how these can link with and deliver regional sustainable communities plans.

·         Develop a programme of community enterprise trusts (moving on from the co-operative style community enterprise trusts developed in Scotland), in partnership with the Dti, the RDAs and the Plunkett Foundation to test the hypothesis that every parish council should have a community enterprise trust to take action where local government and the private sector cannot.

·         Test the concept through practical implementation of a one stop, single grant pot for rural communities, bringing together all existing central government financial support 

·         Linked to this, following on from the inter-departmental working group on one stop shops, test the practical application in various different village circumstances

·         Development of a parish council grant scheme derived to address priorities arising out of the parish plans.  

·         Development of local capacity building networks, jointly with the RCCs and ACRE to help provide a means of sustainable support for communities to share and learn from, building upon Community Futures programme in Scotland and Canada.

We intend to undertake a consultation exercise with our partners, stakeholders and our customers/beneficiaries during the autumn (subject to the findings of Lord Haskins’ review) on this new direction, including our exit and succession ideas.

Financial and staffing implications

10.   There are no direct net additional financial or staff implcations of this paper. 

Risks and mitigation measures

11.   The main risk to the programme lies outside of the Agency in the form of the Government’s decisions on the Rural Delivery Review.   To mitigate this unknown risk the Programme Director has met with the review team to ensure the programme is understood fully and we will continue to inform and work with the review team.   The review team has visited both our Leeds and London offices to talk through the programme with our staff.

12.   The other key risk is demand exceeding available funding and the potential damage to the Agency’s reputation.   This risk was identified back in Board paper AP(01/01).   This can only be addressed by an increasing focus on needy communities, alonside less general promotion.

Annex 1

Performance review (April 2001 –March 2003)

1.         This annex sets out the performance of the Vital Villages programme for the first two years as informed by the Monitoring and Evaluation contract, run by Geoff Broome Associates.

2.         The Board (AP01/01) agreed that the outcome the Agency was trying to achieve was empowered, active and inclusive rural communities.   The Agency recognised that through our actions alone we would not necessarily achieve this but, by pursuing three clear objectives, with appropriate accompanying targets, we could make a significant contribution to realising this outcome.

3.         The objectives the Board set were:

·            To encourage small rural communities to identify and act to meet local needs

·            To help small rural communities to meet their needs for local service provisions in ways that suit local circumstances

·            To enable small rural communities, and wider partnerships to implement local transport solutions to meet their local transport needs

4.         The Board agreed the following targets in pursuit of the above objectives, setting two targets for the third objective on transport, reflecting the two very different transport schemes in Parish Transport grants and Rural Transport Partnerships.

Parish Plans 1000 rural communities (note: not plans) to prepare their own parish plans by March 2004

Community Services Grant 2,500 communities supported to sustain or re-establish basic village services

Rural Transport Partnership to deliver 350 new RTP projects, with one partnership in every county by April 2001

Parish Transport Grant to support small scale, locally generated transport solutions, supporting 600 parishes by March 2004

Review of performance

5.         To date we have:

·         supported 611 parish councils on Parish Plans

·         supported 1,236 communities through CSG

·         established 9 new RTPs and 1,054 projects and there is now one partnership per county

·         supported 348 parish councils through PTG

·         spent £27m in the first two years

6.         Community Services grant and Rural Transport Partnership grants are both oversubscribed, and exceeding targets, whilst Parish Plan grants remain slightly under, as does Parish Transport grant.   Both of the latter have shown strong growth in demand in the last 6 months of last year.

7.         The programme is not just about grants.   In particular it is worth highlighting the following:

·       The development of a partnership approach has been critical, not least with ACRE and its network of 38 rural community councils (RCCs), and also with the NALC and the county associations of local councils (CALCs) and, to a lesser extent principal local authorities.

·       We set out to build the capacity of the other key national voluntary sector organisations that we believed to be critical to achieving the outcome of empowered, active and inclusive communities.   We supported, for example, the work of Propel (the arm of Business In the Community which provides free business advice to voluntary groups), ViRSA (the Village Retail and Services Association) and the Plunkett Foundation (a charitable body taking forward community enterprise) and have increased our support to the Rural Community Councils through a direct injection of Vital Villages funds to the Service Level Agreements. We have forged new partnerships with the Post Office and Citizens Advice Bureau amongst others

·       We have also established and supported the availability of technical expertise to communities e.g., through support for retail advisers and transport consultants (note: half of all projects receive technical support/advice)

·       In addition, to ensure that communities have access to help from capacity builders such as the RCCs, we also know of the importance of the availability of technical/professional help eg retail or transport advice to communities to make things happen

·       We established the Vital Villages database (now with over 4000 projects), that records all the projects we have approved.   It is being developed as a learning tool for communities to learn from one another

·       We achieved joint Ministerial backing for our Parish Plans guidance to parish councils, and Ministerial support for our guidance to local authorities on the role and importance of parish plans in the planning system

·       We used the evidence from our grants programmes, our ‘know how, and show how’ approach to begin to influence government policy, the best example being ‘Wheels to work’ arising from our Rural Transport Partnerships 

·       We have evidence to show that not only do small grants build social capital, but also the programme encourages a large number of partnerships and unlocks funding streams from other organisations, including the private sector and charitable trusts with a 1:4 gearing ratio

·       We have evidence that the main beneficiaries of our grants are the elderly, young, disabled and low-income groups.

·       Parishes of over 1,000 population are three times more likely to have a Vital Villages grant, than one of 500

8. In addition, from the monitoring report we know:

·        Parish Plans  are largely being taken up by medium sized parish councils; they are generally taking longer than 12 months (more like 18 months): there is a big time lag between registrations of intent (ROI) and applications: smaller parishes are less likely to apply; the lack of guidance early on hampered the delivery of the RWP target; initial findings suggest Parish Plans have been of variable quality but there is also good evidence that they can be inclusive in their approach and can lead to wider than parish council action and involvement in leading citizens to stand for election; early signs suggest they lead to longer term action: Parish Plans are now well linked to national policy re DEFRA and ODPM and being embraced by local authorities in many areas.

·        Community Services Grant:   this evolved from the old Village Shops Development Scheme.   The scheme has been dominated by village shops, but this is in decline and the new grants were originally dominated by applications for village shop support.   Now, however, there is a very wide range of services and facilities supported. It is mainly the middle-sized communities coming forward who already have services. Specific disadvantaged groups are not well represented, nor are the most needy. Demand remains high and last year we rejected around 1 in 7 applications (most often because they could not demonstrate community need or support). The lessons learnt are not yet being used to their full extent to influence policy.

·        Parish Transport Grant   Following the offer of free transport consultancy advice (which has proved cost effective) the take up has been strong with the striking characteristic of parishes clustering together and schemes coming forward from smaller parishes (500 and less) without services. There is a good range of projects but there are issues over sustainability and there has been varied support/enthusiasm by local authorities.

·        Rural Transport Partnerships   A broader funding base (beyond the Agency) is needed.   There is a significant number of three year projects with staff related costs (ie possible issue of dependency).   The extent to which many projects will continue after our support has ceased is unknown yet.   We can do more in making effective use of lessons learnt through improved and better evaluation but we need to decide how to use RTP funding in the future in order to achieve maximum return.

Annex 2

Lessons learnt

For government and the Agency

·         It takes about 6 months to set up a programme before effective delivery can be achieved. This needs to be built into any future project and programme management and a clear succession plan needs to be in place within two years of start up (on a 6 year programme) in order both to manage the programme and ensure it sticks

·         Such programmes need to run for a six-year period if the harder to reach, more deprived, communities are to be tackled and this needs to be built into our corporate planning process.

·         Community based programmes, depending upon their nature and scope, will need to include the flexibility to deliver specialist advice - eg transport; retail services - in order for communities to fully take charge of their own destinies

·         In-year monitoring and evaluation that feeds back in order to develop and direct programmes should be encouraged for all significant programmes

·         We need much stronger and quicker links between implementation/demonstration programmes and policy development and our influencing role.   The new structure should aid this, but it also applies now across programmes, e.g. A1 with A2.

·         It is possible to operate a national scheme, delivered both regionally and locally in a very cost effective way (i.e. <10% running costs) with quick turnaround times (15 days) and minimal paperwork and risk

·         Because of the nature of community development it takes time to deliver and the Agency needs to plan changes in resourcing levels well in advance in order to effectively manage changes in direction 

·         The Vital Villages programme has demonstrated that a niche exists in the market place for a simple, responsive, government programme that can help rural communities help themselves. Vital Villages is a popular, well known brand within which government money can reach direct to rural communities

·         Any Government’s supported programme that seeks to generate activity by individuals or groups within rural communities needs to invest in building the capacity of both voluntary and private sector in order to realise the potential of the social capital that exists in rural areas,

·         The Vital Villages programme has demonstrated that it is possible to make the link from national policy to local delivery (Whitehall to village hall), particularly through Community Strategies and Parish Plans.   Government should community- proof its rural policy to check for deliverability.

·         However, national programmes need to be both designed and operated (at the delivery end) in such a way as to reflect and respond to locally determined needs and priorities. Ideally, such programmes should be market tested from the outset prior to implementation.

·         Government community-based programmes like Vital Villages need to have built into them not only action orientated monitoring and evaluation, but also annual customer feedback in the form of market research to ensure the programmes remain valid and are adjusted to meet both the needs of the customers and also meet the objectives of the programme.   For the Agency Vital Villages has been more than a grants programme; it has linked research, experimental, demonstration and innovative solutions to improve delivery to meet consumer needs

For rural communities

·         The people best placed to demonstrate and show to others what can be achieved, are those who have already done so. There is a huge untapped reservoir of skills, knowledge and experience that can be transferred to those in need, but a national programme is required to make this happened in a planned and strategic manner;

·         Parish and town councils can play a much stronger leadership role in their community, but many need to find ways of working closer with there electorates to both realise the needs of the whole community and to help unlock the skills, experience and knowledge already available to them within their communities;

·         Vital Villages has demonstrated it is possible to increase the level of active citizenship;

·         Rural communities can take charge of their own destinies and influence other service providers, but they need both mechanisms and evidence to argues their case, such as through Parish Plans;

·         The Vital Villages programme has demonstrated there is enormous social capital in rural areas that can be harnessed to complement public and private sector provisions, 

·         The small rural settlements of less than 500 population are those most likely to be disadvantaged but careful targeting combined with local knowledge and capacity building can reach those most in need. In these areas accessibility to nearby facilities and services is the key;

·         Young people and the elderly remain those who are most disadvantaged by existing public policy and delivery programmes.

For partnership working

·         A national organisation is required to bring partners to the table and broker arrangements that then ensures the successful delivery that reflects regional and local needs;

·         These arrangements need to be brokered and put in place both nationally e.g. with NALC and ACRE, as well as locally e.g. RCCs and CALCs;

·         This applies particularly to the local i.e. below county level, where existing voluntary organisations are very local and specific and are not part of a national network where learning and resources and expertise are shared;

·         Local authorities are, in general, not working to help rural communities help themselves, but in many cases are merely consulting with and in some cases still determining their futures for them; 

·         Current public service provision, both in its spending and means of delivery is not meeting the expressed needs of rural communities.   The Vital Villages programme has demonstrated what communities need and want in the form of key services for a better quality of life.   Examples of where lessons learnt can be mainstreamed include   ‘Parish Plans: guidance to local authorities’;

·         The capacity of the public sector also needs building and investing in order to work more effectively in support of rural communities, demonstrated by our work on planning through Parish Plans; our work on transport and Rural Transport Partnership Officers, etc;

·         The scope of community action is enormous. The skills, experience, knowledge and resources of communities should not be underestimated in the scale and complexity of tasks that they can tackle, provided the support, advice, knowledge and training is put in place. The public sector needs to trust communities more and be more ambitious, setting frameworks and compacts to let them flourish.

Annex 3

A new direction

1.       The Vital Villages programme is not an entity in its own right but is made up of and gets its strength from a mixture of activities well beyond just the awarding of grants and that each component (even the grants) have different dynamics. It includes 

·         research, monitoring and evaluation contracts,

·         policy development eg Parish Plans 

·         public relations and promotional programmes (including a contract with a call centre); 

·         customer research and testing

·         knowledge management (eg vital villages database and good practice case studies)

·         capacity development eg ViRSA

·         grant advice and delivery.

2.    Our goals in redirecting the Vital Villages programme are:

·         to ensure we can make the lessons learnt have application across the country and are then auctioned by others picking up the work as part of their normal activity e.g. Department of Work and Pensions taking forward ‘Wheels to Work’

·         to ensure as many communities share their knowledge and act upon the good practice of others already established

·         to continue to address the issues facing local communities at the local level 

·         to develop new ideas informed, wherever appropriate, by evidence of need

·         to reflect regional and local needs but ensure consistency and devolution of delivery

·         to continue to build the capacity of others to help communities become empowered, active and inclusive, 

·         to continue to meet the needs of the most needy

·         to continue to operate a transparent, simple and clear grants programme, where appropriate.

3.    Drawing from the lessons learnt and monitoring and evaluation work to date, and placing these into the current political and organisational context within which we must consider how the ‘Vital Villages’ programme should progress, our initial thinking is:

·        Parish Plans. Our focus is now turning to evaluating the impact of Parish Plans, both as a community development tool and in terms of actions on the ground, both direct and indirect. We need to do more work still to ensure Parish Plans are seen by local authorities, DEFRA and ODPM to be part of both the statutory and community planning system and use the information arising from Parish Plans of communities priorities and concerns (as they see them) to inform our own work programme and the Quality Parish initiative. We will use the information from Parish Plans to influence Local Strategic Partnerships and Community Strategies. We will also work to ensure Parish Plans are effectively embedded into the new local development frameworks. We already have evidence of local authorities adopting and using parish plans but we need to gather and harness this evidence and share it. We will continue to offer grants for Parish Plans to achieve our target of 1,000 (with variable rates of grant) encouraging a mix of parish and town councils in order to learn as much as possible from different circumstances and situations.   But within the life of the next corporate plan to be considered by the Board we intend to withdraw from funding further parish plans and hand on the concept to local authorities with the full support of the LGA, DEFRA and ODPM.

·        Community services.  Our focus is now on encouraging more applications from those most in need (determined by IMD, access to services and priority beneficiaries) and evaluation of these in order to help provide the evidence base to influence other big government spending departments eg Department of Health. We intend gradually to withdraw from supporting commercial enterprises over the corporate plan period, seeking to encourage both DTI and the 8 regional development agencies to take this aspect of economic activity on.   However, this sector is currently a very low priority both for RDAs and for business support. We face a big challenge in influencing them. For the future, the community services grant might become a primary tool to help demonstrate need and pilot new ideas in service delivery and local solutions as identified by local communities through Parish Plans

·        Parish Transport. Our focus remains on reaching those most in need, as demonstrated through a transport needs assessment, Parish Plan, Market Town Health check or some other form of community consultation. Our priority will be increasingly to those from an access deprived rural ward, small parish (population less than 500); and projects primarily for socially excluded groups ie elderly, people with disabilities, young people, people without access to private cars or meet a regional priority. Within the life of the corporate plan we will look to exit from Parish Transport Grant, looking to integrate it into the re-worked community grant with the emphasis on accessibility to services

·        Rural Transport Partnership.  The programme, which covers two other programme areas within the Agency, is subject to separate evaluation this year.   Priority is given to projects that arise from an RTP action plan, projects that arise from newly established RTPs and projects that are community based.   All projects must demonstrate effective ways of tackling social exclusion, address specific needs of groups with restricted access to private transport eg young people; or test innovative approaches.   We will continue to take lessons from the programme and seek to influence other relevant government departments. Currently the RTP programme across the Agency lacks a succession plan; the Programme Director for A2 will take this forward. 

In addition, and in support of the above we will continue to develop the capacity of other organisations to support communities; provide technical expertise where needed; developing a national network of supporters/deliveries e.g. Help the Aged.

Potential new areas of work to start to bring on

7. As we pursue our exit strategy for those elements within the current Vital Villages programme we are currently considering the following new areas of demonstration and pilots that would contribute to achieving empowered, active and inclusive communities. They constitute ideas at this stage and the Board is invited to comment on them (if they were to develop into significant programmes the Board would discus them both as part of the normal corporate plan discussion, and with specific business plans behind each).   The Board’s steer is invited, along with other suggestions.

8.   Our challenge in developing this new direction can be summarised as twofold;

·         influencing those organisations we want to take on the future running of any of the existing Vital Villages grants e.g. Parish Plans

·         bringing on the new ideas, reflecting the evidence we have, for testing and demonstrating for delivery.