Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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Ev 46 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence 17 November 2010 James Paice MP, Jeremy Eppel and Dan Osgood Mr Paice: We can in terms of agreement with Europe. Yes, we could go to Europe and say, “Yes, we want to change the split.” The reality, given that we’ve just been through the CSR process and all these programmes have been under immense scrutiny, is we’re not going to try. We’ve already had to cool down spending across the piece, and I don’t think there’s any real scope now, for the remainder of these three years, to change the picture, as much as I might like to. Q212 Mrs Glindon: Minister, can I just go back to what you were saying about post-2013 and the localism issue? You said LEPs are a possible way of distributing funds. If that didn’t happen through LEPs, the thing with the RDAs now is that they use local knowledge, which is important. I have an example in my own constituency, where the local abattoir just received £200,000 through One North East. It’s managed by Natural England, and the Forestry Commission has also okayed that money. That means we’re now going to have an EU-standard abattoir, and animals won’t be slaughtered out of the area as they have been for a while now. It’s about that localism issue. Is that not really an important part of distributing the funds to farmers? If LEPs aren’t the people to manage it, how will you hold on to that very local knowledge for the production industry as a whole? Mr Paice: LEPs may very well be the right vehicle. All I’m saying, or meant to say—I hope I did say it— was that we haven’t made those decisions yet, because that will be for post-2013. We can’t do it at the moment because, as Mr Blenkinsop was saying, there aren’t LEPs in every area. As I say, because of the relatively small amount of money left unallocated, it’s just not worth the huge investment that would be involved in setting up new structures. Post-2013, yes, LEPs are clearly in probably the primary position. All I’m saying is that we haven’t given a definitive answer, but they may well be right. Your point about an abattoir is extremely valid. There’s been one in Suffolk helped by the eastern region one in the last couple of years, from the same funding. They are very important and very relevant. If anything, I have a concern that LEPs may almost be too small in some cases. Some LEPs are going to be huge and some are going to be very small. You then face the issue of how rural individual LEPs are. One of the criticisms of even RDAs has been, in some areas, that they have frankly not faced up to the rural aspects of their region. That could be even worse with smaller LEPs. As I say, no decision has been made. I certainly haven’t come to any personal view on the subject, and LEPs are clearly a major opportunity. Mrs Glindon: What I wanted to clarify was whether local knowledge will be an important factor. RDAs have local knowledge and can work with local communities. Will that be a factor? I think it’s important to upland communities—to any community—to know that the people making the decisions have the local knowledge. That’s the key thing I was trying to hint at, Chair. Mr Paice: That’s the big achievement of the Leader programme, which I referred to. Leader programmes are where funding is allocated sub-RDA to a partnership in a particular area. That may involve local authorities, the local agricultural societies in some cases, all sorts of local groups—parish councils, etc. They will then be allocating. That really is driving localism right down to a very, very small area—much smaller than a LEP area. That’s working now. That system is there and they’ve already got large sums of money out of most RDAs, and they are spending it locally. I used the example of the agricultural society, because I happen to know that, in the North West RDA, there are some agricultural societies, particularly the Cumbria Agricultural Society if my memory serves me right, which are leading the Leader programme, and actually making the really local decisions that we all think should be the basis of it. There is a lot of it already happening under Leader. Q213 Tom Blenkinsop: The NFU’s Head of Policy Services, Andrew Clark, said, “Reading through the initial proposals,” regarding LEPs, “it is apparent that farming and food are recognised as key sectors by only a handful of LEPs.” You were talking about inscope issues of RDAs being equally applicable to LEPs; I think you alluded to that in your comments. Given that the minimum threshold for bids to the Regional Growth Fund is £1 million, and given the small size of upland farming enterprises, realistically, how will upland farmers benefit from the fund, especially now as we also know— Mr Paice: Sorry, what fund are you saying is a minimum of £1 million? Tom Blenkinsop: In order to tap into the Regional Growth Fund via the LEP, you have to put in a minimum bid of £1 million. That was supposed to be for England excluding the South East; we now know, since Vince Cable’s recent announcement, that South East companies can apply for that fund as well. Do you think that will lessen the amount of money that farmers and agricultural businesses can tap into? Mr Paice: I’m not going to pretend to you that I’m an expert on the Regional Growth Fund and how much money is in total available to it. Obviously it stands to reason that the wider any fund is spread or potentially spread, the slightly lesser chance there is for individuals. If your point is about a threshold of £1 million, clearly the agricultural industry—as I find in doing this job and going around the country—is a vast range of things. There are some cooperative ventures that are spending millions of pounds. For them to put up a million pound application to the Regional Growth Fund wouldn’t be a big problem. For the small guy who wants to put up a £30,000 slurry store, clearly it’s not going to be appropriate, but then maybe RDPE is. EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 Q214 Tom Blenkinsop: The point I’m getting at is that originally the Regional Growth Fund was supposed to be for areas excluding the South East. It now includes the South East. It’s been increased to £1.4 billion but, as you said or alluded to, there are bigger businesses or corporates that have the capital there to apply for that fund, but the small- and medium-sized businesses are getting excluded, especially as that Regional Growth Fund has to pay
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 47 17 November 2010 James Paice MP, Jeremy Eppel and Dan Osgood for roads. Now we know it’s going to start paying for housing as well. That cash seems to be getting smaller by the day, doesn’t it, for those small- and mediumsized businesses? Mr Paice: Obviously it’s going to be harder for those businesses to access that fund. As I say, and I’m not an expert on that fund, my objective is, over a period of time, to open out the opportunities within RDPE for those sorts of farming-related businesses, yes, as an alternative fund to the Regional Growth Fund. I think it might be best if I agreed, Madam Chairman, to write to the Committee on this to try to thrash out the finer detail. 8 Q215 Chair: A couple of concerns: there should be a spread between urban and rural funding in this Regional Growth Fund; if the Committee could have a reassurance in that regard. The other thing that follows from the evidence we took from the NFU and the CLA is the lack of clarity surrounding what procedure and process is going to be over the period between the RDAs going and the LEPs—Local Enterprise Partnerships—coming into effect. I just think it would be helpful if Defra could clarify more and publicise more, what the process is going to be. Mr Paice: That’s a perfectly fair comment, Miss McIntosh. I’m happy to agree to that. As I say, we’ve only been in office six months and we’ve had a lot to do. We are working on developing all these processes. The announcements about LEPs were made only a very short time ago. Not all the country is being covered by them, so there’s a whole range of uncertainties but, as soon as possible, we will be publishing the details of what we’re going to do with the RDPE money for the rest of the current programme, and the process by which applicants can make their bids. Chair: In the context of this inquiry, it would be very helpful if you would, Minister. Thank you very much. Mr Paice: Yes. Q216 Mrs Glindon: Minister, you’ve already mentioned affordable housing and the planning process in relation to communities making decisions, but could you perhaps tell us a bit more about what progress has been made on the Home on the Farm scheme? Mr Paice: A little but, as I said, this is very much a responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government and Ministers there but, as I understand it, Andrew Stunell announced the proposal for Home on the Farm three weeks ago. It wasn’t, as I understand it, designed to be the only solution; it was just one more option. There are some parts of the country like my own where, frankly, there are no redundant farm buildings because they’ve already been converted into offices, studios, houses or light industrial workshops, but there are parts of the country where that isn’t the case. In those cases—this links to a manifesto commitment that the Conservative Party made before the election—we would start to consider farm premises as brownfield sites, so we’d ease up the planning constraints on them. It always struck me as daft that we considered a garden as a brownfield site, 8 Ev 84 but a farmyard as a greenfield site, which is a bit contradictory. We’re sorting that out with a view that farm buildings, either direct conversion or indeed possibly just the site, can be used for, as you say, Home on the Farm; for housing. Q217 Mrs Glindon: Would that entail increasing the Home on the Farm idea for perhaps not just someone working on the farm but in relation to retirement or the whole spectrum of buying a home if you need it? Mr Paice: It’s not about accommodation for farm workers, no. It’s about residential accommodation, full stop—housing. It could be for retired farmers; it could be for young people. It’s one part of trying to increase the stock of available housing in rural areas apart from grand new executive build, which clearly means most people coming into the area. It’s about local needs. It is an opportunity for farmers to work with communities; it could fall under the example I used earlier of Community Right to Build, which DCLG is working on, or it could fall under direct development as a registered social landlord. There is a whole range of options. I’m not really empowered to speak on behalf of DCLG, but basically they’re just trying to create the opportunities to free up the system for localism to work for local communities, local landowners, farmers and so on to find a solution that suits their particular circumstances—that fits their farm premises and their farmyards. These will tend to be ones that are no longer working farmyards, for obvious safety reasons, though not always. It’s to free up the planning arrangements so that they can make those choices. It’s not about a blueprint dictated from on high. Q218 Mrs Glindon: When we were speaking with the Tenant Farmers Association last week, one of the things we were talking about, in relation to extending existing premises, was succession. It seems from what you were just saying that we could be moving away from the actual premises being used to keep a community in farming. Could they end up as second homes? I’m a bit confused here. Mr Paice: I understand why you’re confused, because I perhaps misunderstood where you’re coming from. The issue of succession and tenancies I’ve always considered as hugely important, and nothing we’re proposing gets in the way of that. A tenant farmer trying to make the most of their farm business and involve an element of diversification, may convert a property for a holiday let, for example. The previous Government did this work, to their credit, through the Tenancy Reform Industry Group that I referred to earlier, to change practice. Perhaps I need to write to the Committee to get this absolutely precise, but I think they changed some minor regulation to ensure that that sort of diversification didn’t stop the inheritance— 9 Chair: Was it Annex to Planning Policy Statement number 7? Mr Paice: No, I don’t think so; I think it was in agricultural tenancy legislation rather than planning. The problem was that, if a tenant diversified and the landlord said, “You haven’t got consent to do that,” it EMBARGOED ADVANCE COPY: Not to be published in full, or part, in any form before 00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011 9 Ev 83
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5 Upland communities EMBARGOED ADVA
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