Breadcrumbs
Minutes of the 33rd Meeting of the Countryside Agency
Present: Ewen Cameron, Chairman
Pam Warhurst
Kate Ashbrook
John Varley
Victoria Edwards
Tony Hams
Graham James
Alison McLean
Philip Lowe
Sue Stapely
Peter Fane
Frances Rowe
In attendance: Richard Wakeford, Chief Executive
Marian Spain, Director
Jeremy Worth, Programme Director
Brian Wilson, Programme Director
Juliet Grace, Head of Management Support Group
Chairman’s introduction
1. The Chairman welcomed Board members, Countryside Agency staff and one officer from Defra.
2. The Chairman said that this was Sue Stapely’s last attendance as a Board member for the Agency. He thanked Sue for her work and dedication, and the support and advice she had provided to the Agency’s Board and staff alike.
Apologies for absence
3. Apologies had been received from Sir Martin Doughty, Luna Frank Riley and Janet Bradbury.
Minutes of the meeting of 12 December 2002
4. The minutes of the 12 December Countryside Agency meeting were approved.
Minutes of the meeting of 12 December 2002 – Closed sessions
5. The minutes of the closed session papers were approved.
Matters arising
6. Board members noted a matters arising report on transport. The Chairman added that he had met with Ministers from the Department for Transport and spoken to them about multi modal studies.
7. The meeting noted the position on a disaster recovery plan for the Agency’s information technology as raised at the Board meeting in December 2002.
8. The Board noted the nine pilot schemes chosen for the Local Exercise Action Pilots, in partnership with the Department of Health and Sport England, were well in line with the Agency’s goals.
9. The Board were content with the publication of a re-expressed strategy for the Agency, to replace Tomorrow’s Countryside, for launch in early March alongside the Corporate Plan.
Third Quarter Report AP03/01
In attendance, Jeff Smallwood.
10. Introducing the paper, Jeff Smallwood outlined the good progress that had been made towards planned outcomes and financial outturn by the third quarter of 2002/03. The ringfence on transport budget had been removed by Defra, allowing a transport underspend to be reallocated to other areas of work. A further £800k had been offered back to Defra. The Executive had agreed that transport grants needed to be reviewed to enable the Agency to learn the lessons as to why the parish transport budget had not been taken up. Looking forward the major area of risk for the Agency remained the implementation of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act 2000.
11. The introduction of resource accounting and budgeting (RAB), as opposed to reporting on a cash accounting basis, was in line with the rest of the Government sector, and training was being implemented throughout the Agency.
12. In discussion Board members made the following points:
a. The report was open and helpful and it demonstrated the good progress that had been made towards achieving planned outcomes.
b. One of the key lessons to be learnt from underspend on Parish Transport Grants was the need for more rigorous market research and forecasting within the Agency to enable better prediction of budget requirements. The failure to spend on transport was considered a low risk to the Agency’s reputation. A full review would be required to understand how to avoid underspend in future. Transport had been a Rural White Paper initiative and the Agency had not been able to carry out enough market research with parish councils before the launch of the grant scheme. It had now been established that one of the key issues for the lack of uptake of the grant was because it could not provide the community capacity building which was an important part of other successful grant schemes, such as Rural Transport Partnership.
c. The Board required reassurance that reallocation of £3.8m from transport would result in effective spending. The Chief Executive agreed to circulate a note.
d. The presentation of detailed information was important so that Board members understood what decisions they were expected to make. The format and structure of the reports from each programme area needed to be shorter, tighter and clearer. Reports needed to be presented in similar style and detail to enable the Board to concentrate on the strategic issues and key trends. Although similar reports were made to the Board each Quarter the detail within the Annex was more appropriate for executive decision making. The Chief Executive confirmed that the Annex was, indeed, prepared for the Executive and shared with the Board only so that the detail was available to those members who wanted it.
e. The need for re-categorisation of budgets in the transfer to RAB had resulted in some confusion. The new corporate structure and RAB would help to provide transparency of reporting. Some of the decisions needed, and highlighted in the Annex, were dealt with by relevant Directors, and would in future be taken by Programme Directors. The Executive would then concentrate their decision making on issues related to the transfer of resources from one area to another with a change in priorities, and cross cutting issues. With fewer programmes under the new structure there would be fewer reports for the Board to consider.
f. As a public document subject to scrutiny it was important to provide a clear explanation of action taken where targets had not been met and no Executive decision was required. For example, with the implementation of CROW a project board had been set up to resolve issues.
g. The Annex highlighted that there had been underspend on the Rural Housing Enabler budget which had not been mentioned in the Paper. Chief Executive would cover this in the promised follow-up note.
h. The Chairman’s trilateral meetings with government departments had in all cases been successful in take-up of the philosophy and approach to rural proofing. The Agency was taken seriously across the board.
i. Despite a lot of effort to attract more diverse applicants, such as young people from urban areas, National Park appointments was not considered by Defra to have been fully successful. The Board would meet the Minister during March 2003 to discuss how to improve the appointment process and attract applicants. That should be followed up by a meeting of all Board members with National Park responsibilities, with ANPA present, to identify the best way forward for the next round of appointments.
j. The project board established to support the implementation of CROW had met twice and had already identified fundamental operational issues. These had resulted in both the Agency and Defra making changes to working practices which could result in a significant reduction in the cost of administration. The number of appeals on the mapping exercise had been considerably fewer than expected which could result in fewer resources needed. The project board had also identified that the mapping process would need to proceed at a more modest pace than originally timetabled internally. A Board paper for April Board meeting would provide more detail about resources for the mapping and the restrictions and closures exercises.
13. Summing up the discussion the Chairman concluded that:
w the Board noted progress towards planned outcomes and financial outturn by the Third Quarter;
w presentation of supporting material for Quarterly reports should be uniform, shorter, tighter and clearer to enable the Board to focus on the strategic issues and key trends;
w a note would be circulated summarizing the decisions taken by the Executive in January.
Rural Service Standards AP03/02
In attendance Brian Wilson and Helen Thompson.
14. Introducing the paper, Brian Wilson outlined the Agency’s role in producing an annual report to monitor progress towards, and proposed developments for, minimum standards in rural services. Where it was possible to measure progress accurately the standards appeared to have been met. Some data were difficult to get and interpret. For example, there were still discrepancies in the national and local standards and the definition of ‘rural’ was applied inconsistently. The paper proposed new standards including some offered following discussions with government departments, particularly the departments for Education and Transport. Proposals for 2004 were ambitious and would need to be more measurable and meaningful. The Board were asked to consider whether the standards were ambitious enough, and how publication of the report should be managed to achieve a high profile.
15. In discussion Board members made the following points:
a. Rural proofing was vital work to improve the quality of life for people in rural areas, and the Agency was undertaking excellent work for rural populations by asking profound, searching and technical questions of service providers.
b. The Agency should engage more with people in rural constituencies and be very clear about who the user groups are. It was important to avoid seeing rural proofing as an exercise that was divorced from people living and working in rural areas. For example, the experience of those communities undertaking parish plans should help inform the new standards and relate directly back to national policy. Existing local authority citizen panels should be utilised, or user panels of excluded groups of rural people should be established to provide direct feedback on the standard of service provision. Rural communities needed themselves to provide the evidence base as to what services are required by whom, identified from the Vital Villages programme. The Agency needed to work hard to ensure that data and approaches were accepted by Defra.
c. This year’s report needed to trace the trends and make sound judgements on where improvements were possible. Where performance was impossible to assess, that in itself said something about rural proofing; service providers who did not measure their rural delivery standards and performance could hardly be said to be rural proofing. Why, for example, was it impossible to analyse whether calls to NHS Direct were rural or urban?
d. The rural proofing report needed to have as high a profile as possible to trigger debate.
16. Summing up the discussion the Chairman concluded that:
w the Board noted progress on producing the second annual report of the Rural Services Standard, the emerging issues and the proposals for future work;
w material in the Agency revealing the experiences of rural people needed to be better utilised to ensure the evidence base included qualitative data.
National Countryside Access Forum AP03/03
In attendance, Jeremy Worth.
17. Introducing the paper, Jeremy Worth outlined that the National Countryside Access Forum (NCAF) had been established to support the Agency across a range of access issues. However, the focus of NCAF had been mainly dominated by issues related to open access and, as a result, the skills and experience of some forum members were underused. Two forum members had recently resigned at a time when the need for high level advice across a range of access related issues was growing. The membership of NCAF needed to be strengthened and broadened and a new seminar-style format for meetings introduced to distinguish the Forum from a wide range of officer level technical working groups which the Agency currently supported.
18. In discussion Board members made the following points:
a. The Forum was very useful for information dissemination and had helped the Agency’s credibility. It was important that NCAF could focus on its core role and complete the original job it was set up to do.
b. NCAF advises the Agency Board which in turn advises government. This process had not been rigorously followed. It was important that the feedback process was comprehensive and two-way.
c. It was important that NCAF did not duplicate the work of other groups, for example, the rural tourism sub-group of RAFE. It should also continue to meet in public.
d. A diverse user group and service provider representation was important in the Forum to ensure useful dialogue and connection across government.
e. The current membership list and the reason for resignation of members was required to enable the Board to determine how improvements could be made.
f. Consideration should be given to co-opting members on to NCAF for short term periods to deal with specific tasks or issues.
g. A new role for NCAF could be to support and monitor the work of local access forums, and relay any emerging issues to the Agency.
19. Summing up the discussion the Chairman concluded that:
w the Board agreed that the membership of NCAF should be strengthened, and co-opting should be considered as one measure;
w NCAF should not lose its core function and focus of providing high level advice, though the process of reporting and providing feedback needed improvement;
w In future it should meet quarterly, in a seminar format.
Steps towards a revised Country Code AP03/04
In attendance, Roger Ward.
20. Introducing the paper, Roger Ward outlined the Agency’s duty under CROW to produce a country code. The Board meeting in September 2002 had agreed to a consultation process with key partners. This paper provided the results of the consultation and proposals on the next steps to achieving a code. Careful management would be required of what could sometimes be construed as conflicting messages in the code. A matrix approach for different target audiences had been developed, though did not need to be decided on or implemented until after wider external consultation had been carried out. The main partners were keen to work closely with the Agency on the process.
21. In discussion Board members made the following points:
a. The clarity of communication and the engagement of others was critical to the success of the code. A strategy for communicating the code would need to be in place early. Common and consistent messages were important to establish. The launch of the code would need careful management to ensure it was done at the right time and the right way.
b. The matrix approach did seem very complicated, but it should be tested. A plan ‘B’ would need to be developed in case the matrix approach proved to be too complicated. Timescales for reverting to an alternative approach would need to be established and approved by the Open Access Project Board to ensure aspirations could be met either way.
c. £250k had been allocated within the Corporate Plan for the forthcoming year for work on the code. Other organisations had offered to work in partnership with the Agency. A project plan would be put to the project board and vigilance would be maintained on the whole estimated cost.
d. The list of those to be consulted should be expanded to include land managers and owners who, along with users, had important contribution to the success of the code. NCAF would need to be involved at each of its next four meetings. Consideration also needed to be given to consulting with those involved in the urban fringe.
22. Summing up the discussion the Chairman concluded that:
w the Board gave its support to the proposals for wider external consultation on the revised Country Code, subject to the risks and concerns highlighted during discussion and in the paper.
Proposals for the Second Annual Report on Rural Proofing
In attendance, Brian Wilson
Closed paper.
Rural Delivery Review
In attendance, Carolyn Cadman
Closed discussion.
Date and location of the next meeting
23. The next meeting of the Countryside Agency Board would be on 10 April 2003, John Dower House, Cheltenham.
