23 June 2000
The group, which represents 60 of the most rural of local authorities in England, wants a new body comprising local government and Whitehall representatives to be set up to ensure the white paper's recommendations are translated into action.
In the longer term, it would like the round table to represent its interests in Whitehall when government policies are being decided.
Graham Biggs, who co-chairs the RSP with Steven Pugsley, said the new body was intended to give the rural white paper some teeth. 'We need a structure to oversee the proper implementation of its recommendations,' he said.
'We need to have a mechanism that can look at the key issues and then take a view about how it will impact on rural areas, in particular sparsely-populated areas.'
The organisation is also calling on the government to take account of the problems of serving a small population spread over a large area when drawing up its new local government funding formula.
Pugsley, who also leads the RSP's elected members forum, said the main issues facing rural councils were the extra costs of providing services such as home care, and poor public transport preventing access to key services.
'We have worse services than our urban counterparts and have to bear the added costs of providing them,' he added.
The RSP's demand came after a report by the Countryside Agency highlighted social exclusion as a significant problem in rural areas. It found that isolation, low incomes and difficulty reaching health services were all problems that go 'largely unrecognised'.
Agency chairman Ewen Cameron recommended a specific rural strand in the work of the Social Exclusion Unit. 'Some people in rural areas face disadvantage as acute as those in urban areas,' he concluded.
PFjun2000
