Toolkit to help rural economies launches

A new toolkit has been launched to help ‘anyone seeking to raise rural relevance in the economic agenda’. 

The Rural Economy Toolkit has been developed by the Institute of Economic Development (IED) and the Rural Services Network (RSN).

The IED and RSN collectively believe that rural economies present great opportunities for the UK and have been somewhat overlooked in recent economic policy.

In order to address this, the toolkit some of the ‘mega trends’ which will create change in rural economies but links these to opportunities.

It also provides a number of case studies of different rural economy initiatives as well as some examples of successful rural businesses.

‘Current economic strategies in the UK tend towards an urban narrative with the important rural agenda overlooked – despite the importance of resources, activities and people in these areas to the future economic strength of the country,’ said IED chair Bev Hurley CBE and RSN chief executive Graham Biggs MBE.

‘Many drivers of change in the economy have an important rural dimension and create economic opportunities. The most important drivers in this report are identified as low carbon, digitisation, ageing and wealth creation.

‘There are many examples of best practice, where rethinking a rural approach led to economic gains ignored by mainstream strategy. This toolkit approach encourages lateral thinking not standardisation. There is no such thing as ‘rural businesses’ – any business can thrive in a rural setting.

‘The Rural Economy Toolkit provided sets out how rural areas can define themselves; find and present the relevant data; use comparators and time series data to identify strengths and weaknesses and then combine this with lived experience to seize the initiative in strategy.’

Photo Credit – Lumix2004 (Pixabay)