Research Reports
The Decentralization Process of Rural Policy in England
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AuthorKim, Soosuk
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Publication Date2005.12.01
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Original
The decentralization of rural policy in England was started in 1988 by the reform of the Structural Funds of the EU. Since then, the England has experienced several reforms of administrative structure of the central and regional organizations in order to improve the effects of rural policies in local areas. Thus, this study is to get some implications from the England's experience in decentralizing the implementation processes of rural development policies.
The rural development policy was firstly introduced to England by the Objective 5b policy in 1989. This approach to regional development is not that familar in the England. The traditional approach to regional development has been urban and industrially oriented with the centralized way of implementation. From then on, thus, it was necessary not only to reform the administrative structure in central government but also to reorganize local development agencies. Such reforming processes were to establish decentralized implementation system of rural development policy and facilitated by the recent reform of the CAP and the Structural Funds, which applied to the England Rural Development Programme(ERDP), Objective 1 areas and LEADER+ programmes.
From the reviewing government publications and several interviews with those who are responsible for the programme operation, this study found out characteristics of the each rural policy. In the case of ERDP, the central government still plays an important role in creating and implementing the programmes. However, it is local organizations that are the main actors to determine actual local development programmes in the case of the Objective 1 policy. Thus, it could be said that while the implementation of the ERDP has been decentralized to local organizations dependent on central government, the Objective 1 policy can be characterized by its leading role of local groups in decision making and implementation. LEADER+ programme can be another example of decentralized rural development policy. Despite its relatively small amount of budgetary assistance, the projects initiated by local actors are very effective to meet the needs of local residents. Thus, the way of implementation in LEADER+ programme could be extended to other areas of regional development policies in the EU and England.
The England now considers two different ways of decentralization in rural policy. One is to reinforce the role of Government Regional Offices as a regional co-ordination unit to perform rural development programmes. The other one is to establish new elected regional assembly as a responsible body for strategic planning and to integrate other local development groups into the Regional Development Agencies. Since the elected regional assembly could deal with local needs more effective than the Government Regional Offices, the latter could be a further decentralized system than the former.
From the experience of the England in decentralizing rural policy, we can get an important implication that it is necessary to establish the local development agencies that have in-depth knowledge on each local area and accordingly carry out actual development projects. They should have competence to select actual development projects and responsibility for the results. In other words, setting up the local development agencies in each area is the first step to get decentralized rural policy system.
Researchers: Soo-Suk Kim, Tae-Yeon Kim
E-mail address: soosuk@krei.re.kr, tykim@dku.edu
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