Abstract
The research discussed in this paper was prompted by the writer’s interest in the roles of England’s small country (“market”) towns. It has two aims: first, to discover the extent to which the work programmes announced in the British government’s Rural White Paper (RWP 2000) (DETR-MAFF 2000) are recognised by town clerks, and second, to find out what town councils are doing, either on their own, or with others, and to gauge the potential and desire that they have for a greater degree of autonomy. In both cases the data was gathered from an online questionnaire sent to town clerks.
Highlights
In the United Kingdom voter turnout is low, anger with politicians high (Guardian/ICM 2013), inequality likely to grow (Cribb, Joyce and Phillip 2012: 46) and, following devolution of powers in the late 1990s to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scottish independence is a possibility
The questionnaire was sent to the 230 towns involved in the Market Towns Initiative (MTI) (Powe, Hart & Shaw 2007: 5), and to 358 others classified as market towns (London Ancestor 2013, Wikipedia 2013) selected on the basis of council status and eligibility for the MTI
Given that the programmes covered by the survey were from the rural white paper, and that villages, the most typical rural settlements, had their own RWP programme (VV), the survey was relevant
Summary
In the United Kingdom voter turnout is low, anger with politicians high (Guardian/ICM 2013), inequality likely to grow (Cribb, Joyce and Phillip 2012: 46) and, following devolution of powers in the late 1990s to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scottish independence is a possibility. Whilst only one of the RWP 2000 programmes, the Market Towns Initiative (MTI), was designed to encourage community-led development in and around towns (DETR-MAFF 2000: 73-88), others were relevant. These were the Beacon Towns Programme (BTP), One-Stop Shops (OSS), Gateway Stations (GS), Vital Villages (VV), Rural Transport Partnerships (RTP), Rural Housing Enablers (RHE), and the Local Heritage Initiative (LHI). They, together with the MTI, are outlined in Appendix 1
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