In this blog post, Janet Thornton, vice chair of the Yorkshire Food, Farming and Rural Network explains the efforts being made to ensure new local industrial strategies are ‘rural proofed’. She explains…
“Local Enterprise Partnerships have been tasked with producing their own Local Industrial Strategies (LIS) to complement the national Industrial Strategy.
“The local industrial strategies are being produced in three ‘waves’ – the first wave having already been completed.
“Some members of an External Working Group of the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) amongst others, were concerned that the LIS already produced by the urban-centric LEPs did not seem to demonstrate any meaningful focus on their rural hinterlands, i.e. they did not appear to have been ‘rural proofed’.
“The Group has produced a paper which we hope will encourage those LEPs which have not yet produced their LIS to ensure they are considering how support to the rural businesses within their geographical area can help them achieve their full potential and enable them to contribute to the economic growth the LEPs are seeking to achieve.”
Read the paper in full here: ‘How Local Enterprise Partnerships can maximise their contribution to UK productivity by including rural business’.
