Dr Gordon Morris, University of Exeter, gives a talk to the Northern Rural Network, Newcastle University, 17 April 2012
Dr Gordon Morris is one of the founding members of Small Towns for Tomorrow and author of the group’s second essay, “Small Towns, Big Societies”.
Here we attach a presentation given by Gordon to the Rural Northern Network about his work, exploring rural development and social renewal.
He explores how our interest in our small towns and related research and community-led development has grown in recent years, and how that has been a good thing.
He also touches on a brief description of some personal research into the Market Towns Initiative, and a personal view about local democracy.
Download the presentation (opens pdf)
There is a long and unbroken tradition in our country of celebrating Royal
Jubilees, Weddings and Coronations with the lighting of Beacons whether
they be on the top of mountains, church towers, castle battlements, town
and village greens, country parks, estates and farms and along the beaches
surrounding our shores.
In 2002, over 1,800 beacons were lit to mark The Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Communities across the UK and around the globe, including as far flung as Antarctica came together to light a beacon and celebrate this very special occasion.
This year is to be no different. In 2012, the plan is to have even more with 2,012 being lit, with Her Majesty lighting the National Beacon on Monday 4th June.
If your community would like to take part by creating your own beacon, a guide has been put together for this very purpose. It details how to construct a beacon safely, and also includes the form you’ll need to complete by 30th April to register your beacon.
Please don’t forget to share your plans with us in the run up to the celebrations.
Download the Jubilee Beacons information pack here (opens pdf) or visit the Beacon homepage
The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has released a policy statement detailing its vision for rural England and the spatial policies required to realise that vision.
Cherished for its distinctive landscapes and diverse wildlife, rural England is home for over 12 million people and at least half a million businesses; it is also an open-air factory for growing food and providing essential eco-services such as water, flood control, recyclable energy and carbon sinks.
To sustain a ‘living and working countryside’ however requires a collaborative approach. Communities themselves can take forward ambitions for their own areas, as they have for many years through iniatives such as Community Led Planning, and now through the levers available to them through the Localism Act. However, there are demographic, social, economic and environmental challenges facing rural areas which cannot be resolved by local communities alone.
The TCPA is concerned about these wider challenges and how they can be addressed. The Association is thus taking the longer – and wider – view.
The publication explores five critical challenges and opportunities:
1. How do we meet the immediate needs of many rural people for
affordable homes, well paid jobs, and access to services?
2. How do we meet the additional housing and employment needs of
a growing and ageing population?
3. How can rural England cope with the economic pressures and
restrictions facing the nation?
4. Rural areas have crucial roles to play in growing food and
providing eco-services in a world facing the threats of climate
change.
5. Implementing these policies successfully will be the greatest
challenge of all.
Download the document here (opens pdf)
What are your views on how best to prepare for the future of rural England? Do you have any experiences or are you undertaking research that may be valuable to share? We’d love to hear your views..
Phil Turner, Past President, ECOVAST (European Council for the Village and Small Town) and Planning Aid volunteer, offers his thoughts on small towns from European perspectives and his experiences in Hampshire.
His insights make reference to a paper by Action for Market Towns Chief Executive, Chris Wade, The Next Ten Years: A Market Town Renaissance: The Next Ten Years. Supporting Self-reliance in Communities
Strategic Support – Joining-up Settlements and Policies:
Chris says: ‘…wider regeneration strategies and policies need to take account of any ripple effects, such as the inadvertent impacts of strong urban-focused economic development and housing strategies on smaller rural towns.’
This echoes experience in other European member states. ECOVAST, the European Council for the village and Small Town, has a project called ASSET – Action to Strengthen Small European Towns. Through conferences in Germany, Austria and Croatia we have found that there are good examples where the people of some small towns and villages have taken the initiative to assess their strengths and weaknesses and to promote a vision of a sustainable future, seeking assistance from municipalities, regions and agencies.
Many other small communities lack the skills and capacity to take such action and need support from larger municipalities, regions, governments and NGOs.
The Wittstock Declaration 2008, ECOVAST
In Brandenburg, Germany, governance is enhanced by joint working with neighbouring municipalities. For example Wittstock and Pritzwalk, are pooling functions to improve delivery, without merging political entities or staffing. Retaining the identity of places is essential. Villages are linked to the ‘metropole’ or ‘mother town’ – “decentralised concentration”.
Interim results from ASSET project questionnaire research by Pam Moore. Paper by Valerie J Carter, ECOVAST: Encouraging economic success in historic small towns. Proceedings of Conference, Ivanić-Grad, Croatia, November 11, 2011 – MODELS FOR MANAGEMENT OF HISTORICAL TOWNS REVITALISATION AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES
There is a strong and widespread concern to revive the small towns, to protect and find new life for their remarkable heritage and to strengthen their economies
This effort falls within the broader context of policies within and beyond the European Union; and can call upon programmes of regional development, rural development, spatial planning and other sectoral activities.
The European Commission has highlighted working relationships between urban and rural settlements. The third seminar on urban-rural linkages organised by the DG Regio in collaboration with the Universities of Gloucestershire and of the West of England was on 2July 2009.
http://www.cureforsustainability.eu/index.php?id=7205
ESPON – the European Spatial Planning Observatory Network – has a project EDORA – European Development Opportunities in Rural Areas. This has a focus on ‘…opportunities for increasing regional strengths through territorial cooperation and (to) analyse the potential impact of climate change on the development opportunities of rural areas.’
In England we are unique in Europe without regional agencies and governance. The RDAs and their regional development strategies are abolished by the Localism Act 2011.
It will be interesting to see what effect the sub regional Local Enterprise Partnerships will have on small towns development policy.
In Hampshire, there has been a neglect of rural areas and settlements in the economic strategy of PUSH, the Partnership for Urban South Hampshire (with its Solent Local Enterprise Partnership) embracing the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton and the towns close to them. That has highlighted the need for spatial policy in local plans (core strategies and allocations of land) to address the roles of small towns and villages in terms of jobs and housing.
Winchester City Council (its rural area extending across much of the north of, and into, the PUSH coastal band) embarked on a revision of the local plan core strategy, necessitated by the impending demise of the Regional Spatial Strategy, by inventing the successful ‘Blueprint’ technique. This involved local communities in thinking more widely than the immediate demands of their own families and settlements. ‘Blueprint’ is a 2011 RTPI South East awards winner and is shortlisted for the national awards of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
As well as providing an improved evidence base for the core strategy, ’Blueprint’ seems to have inspired rural settlements such as New Alresford Town and Denmead Village to go beyond their previous work on, respectively, MT Health Check and Parish Plan to bid for ‘front runner’ funding for new Neighbourhood Plans. They see the importance of welcoming development to sustain the vitality of rural settlements, rather than growth concentrated in the county town and the PUSH area.
Hampshire’s county town has some 42,000 population (in European terms a ‘small town’). Recently, the Winchester Town Forum has been advised by the Academy of Urbanism in a review of a vision for the historic city of Winchester. As well as elected members, representatives of the Business Improvement District (BID), the civic society (City of Winchester Trust) and Winchester Action on Climate Change (WinACC) took part. Click here for more information.
One issue urged the Town Forum to look beyond the boundaries of the unparished town wards. The Panel Report of the Academy (Place Partnering) ‘…felt that the Town Forum’s perspective on business development is unduly constrained by its declared boundary [eg it does not include the impact of IBM]…’ (at Hursley) ‘…people commuting into and out of Winchester daily, but the number that travel from the contiguous and local settlements – in particular Kings Worthy – would give a more useful understanding of “local” employees, and households who depend on Winchester town for employment and services. There are also significant employers located in the surrounding area. Not only do these provide employment for Winchester residents, but they may also be important contributors to future economic growth. There is no mention in the vision, for example, of IBM. Its Hursley campus is only…’ five miles ‘…from Winchester town centre, and must be by far the largest private sector employer of Winchester residents. While its location may not be the most sustainable, IBM’s potential to stimulate further activity in high-value added business ought to be exploited, and embraced by the Forum.’
The City of Winchester Trust, involved in well attended community vision events, has discussed with the Town Forum the possibility of a Neighbourhood Plan (or plans) to cover the unparished areas, prepared in co-operation with all the surrounding parish councils.
A joined up vision for the historic city, its suburbs and the surrounding rural area seems a necessary starting point, into which neighbourhood and parish plans can fit. James Derounian, of the University of Gloucestershire, likens that to a ‘Russian Doll’ – the matryoshka affect.
The original matryoshka by Zvyozdochkin and Malyutin, 1890
Creating Affordable Housing Solutions
The Academy Panel also suggested a radical approach to affordable housing, rather than relying on developers’ contributions to deliver forty per cent affordable dwellings the local plan could ‘… identify sites suitable for 100% affordable houses for adoption, not as ‘exception sites’, but as a local planning policy allocation. Sites already in public ownership would be an obvious place to start. The promotion of Localism by the Government, and the desire by many agencies, public and private, to tackle the affordable housing issue provides a fertile context for innovation.’
Chris Wade refers to ‘Enquiry for Design’. Enquiry by Design (EbD) process is a planning tool that brings together key stakeholders to collaborate on a vision for a new or revived community. A three or four-day workshop that will bring together community representatives, the local authority, other relevant service providers and a developer or landowner. The provider is the Princes Foundation, one of the four organisations funded by CLG to assist communities in the process of Neighbourhhood Planning under the Localism Act.
The others organisations funded by CLG are: Locality; The Royal Town Planning Institute (Planning Aid); and the National Association of Local Councils in partnership with the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
For the Isle of Wight Association of Local Councils, NALC and CPRE ran a successful event in November 2011 to explore the new Act and the potential benefits of neighbourhood plans, attended by over 100 people from parish and town councils and voluntary organisations. In plenary and workshop sessions I took the opportunity to promote AMT and ACRE toolkits for community led plans.
Philip A Turner – Past President, ECOVAST (European Council for the Village and Small Town), Planning Aid volunteer
We’re delighted to post our latest essay – Small towns, Big Societies – written by Dr Gordon Morris, a founding Steering Group member of Small Towns for Tomorrow. In this latest foray, Gordon explores the British Government’s keenness on ‘localism’ and the ‘Big Society’, and the semi-invisibility, in relation to policy and local government terms, of England’s small towns. Please have a read and let us have your comments!
Download: Essay 2: Small Towns, Big Societies (opens pdf)
England’s small country towns and large villages are home to
around 11 million people, which is more than one-fifth of the
total population.
They are extremely diverse, with wideranging
histories, characters and functions. Some are poor, some
rich, some inland, some seaside, some picturesque, and some are
essentially industrial or, more likely, post industrial. Many are
now commuter towns.
In the past, policy making for rural towns has mostly been
concerned with the specific character of individual towns rather
than their wider role in the rural settlement system. It has been
localised and discrete (focusing just on single towns) rather than
part of a broader view designed to understand how these places
contribute to a locality and ‘work’ as small communities. Neither
cities, nor villages, they have fallen between two stools when
allocating help and resources.
Small Towns for Tomorrow thinks this should change, so we
are putting forward the case for examining these towns
carefully, discriminating between them, and using the evidence
to ensure that policy and practice reflect real differences and
take local contexts into account. If we do not, we will fail to
capitalise on their many attributes and assets, or to equip them
for the challenges ahead.
We want to encourage a more strategic approach
from all tiers of government and other decision makers.
Our first Essay – Small towns of the future, not the past – examines what we know about small towns in order to set out research topics that we believe
would inform action and policy developments – and that would
help small towns capitalise on their strengths and overcome some
of the challenges they face.
Download: Essay 1: Small towns of the future, not the past (opens pdf)
Small Towns for Tomorrow was launched last year as a policy forum, to develop and advocate greater understanding of the issues faced by small towns across the UK. We want to start open-minded conversations based on fact, but also on sentiment. We want to see best practice and knowledge shared, both from the UK and from further afield.
All of this within the context of a dramatically changing landscape. Small towns face well-rehearsed but nevertheless fundamental challenges. But they also face unprecedented opportunities, because of the confluence of three factors:
- Localism and the Big Society. In mid-January Eric Pickles said that all councils will now have a power of general competence, the ability to do whatever they want in the interests of local people. He noted: “The whole point about localism is that it enables any community, where-ever it is, whatever its circumstances, to make its own choices for growth”. Inevitably there are 1001 unanswered questions and a great deal of scepticism, even cynicism. But small towns should take the Government at their word.
- Climate change & the search for sustainability. The Climate Change Act 2008 requires a reduction of at least 34 percent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. One element widely discussed as part of the mix is a reduction in levels of commuting. Indeed, the increasing cost of travel to work is already making people rethink. This offers small towns an opportunity to promote the creation of new employment opportunities within their communities. This should not be confused with working from home (which has questionable efficiency from a low carbon perspective). More mixed town centre employment can provide a valuable boost to the high street. So we need to help small towns fully understand how they can become more sustainable through a more balanced economy.
- Information technology. An increasing number of small but global businesses are run from small towns, thanks to advances in information and communication technologies. Same as above… technology offers fantastic opportunities to generate wealth in small towns and create a more balanced, sustainable community.
In the months ahead, we will be setting out our stall as a Forum and inviting people to join the conversation. In the meantime, please do send us any comments or opinions.
On 8 July 2010, the Small Towns for Tomorrow Policy Forum launched at The British Academy in central London.
Over 50 delegates from around the country – bringing a diverse range of expertise and experience in areas such as planning, urban regeneration, heritage, and community development – gathered for the first ever conference exploring the future of small towns. The conference was funded and supported by Action for Market Towns.
Small Towns for the Big Society – How are small towns going to develop
in the future and what can we do now to prepare for that?
Former Chairman, the late Professor Ray Pahl opened the conference and introduced the keynote speaker, Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett Professor of Planning and Regeneration at University College London.
Sir Peter set the context for the day with his insight into a new geography for England, and how small towns fit into this. He talked about the continuing north-south divide with a Golden Belt of prosperity sweeping across the south, and the ‘archipelago economy’ of other areas where prosperous ‘islands’ have emerged among areas of greater disadvantage.
In particular, he mentioned the challenges that small towns are facing, including the ageing population and the young being priced out of smaller towns, population growth but lack of housing, out-of-town superstores competing with traditional town centres, and the increasing competition with larger urban areas, both domestically and overseas.
Further speakers provided insight into the future of housing, tourism and small towns, how work patterns might develop in these settlements and town centre economies.
This was followed by a panel session of experts, and finally some discussion groups.