Cheshire and Warrington LEADER Programme

Background

LEADER supports rural businesses and communities with a view to making rural settlements more sustainable. It provides usually around 50% of the cost of projects. We hope to secure £1.5-£2 million for the Cheshire West, Chester and Warrington area and the same for the Cheshire East area from 2015-20,.

There is a requirement in the Rural Development Regulation at EU level that 5% of pillar 2 funding within the Rural Development Budget should be allocated to the LEADER approach.

The slide below shows how it is proposed that this should work in England up to 2020:

The allocation of LEADER funding to different parts of England is a competitive process and the decisions on which areas are to have the funding will be made in September/October by Defra. The decision will be based on the submission of an operating plan and strategy known as a Local Development Strategy (LDS) and only those places with the best LDS will be chosen.
The LDS has to set out very clearly the local issues facing rural businesses and to identify what needs to be done to address them.

The Defra approach to allocating funding in relation to LEADER for 2015-20 will focus on jobs and growth with an England wide allocation of funding based on the slide below:

LEADER is managed by a Steering Group of local people called a Local Action Group (LAG) and it is governed by the LDS.

Whilst a LAG will need to be formally recruited to govern the LEADER partnership if it is agreed, in the interim Cheshire West (with Warrington and East are currently developing their own Local Action Groups and building them up with key stakeholders during the evolution of the transition bid to September 2014.

Whilst the decision on the allocation of LEADER funding will be made by Defra nationally, the delivery of LEADER will have to align locally with the work of the Local Enterprise Partnership. Current Government thinking on how the different EU funding streams including LEADER will all fit together locally is based on the slide below:

The positive engagement and formal support for the LEADER proposal by the LEPs active in the area is a key pre-requisite of the submission of a successful bid.

Whilst this all seems rather complicated LEADER in its practical application is a fund, which would bring significant benefit to small businesses and communities in the Cheshire and Warrington rural area. LEADER as a whole has its origins in a series of EU initiatives dating back to 1991 and seeks to deliver rural development at the neighbourhood level. The programme grew out of the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes of the 1970s, and was formally constituted in 1988 by the European Parliament. It operates on 7 well defined principles which over time have proved very successful in not only providing a framework for grant giving, but building the capacity of rural communities.

Consultation Process

5 focus group meetings with key stakeholders linked to the areas of proposed LEADER activity referenced above have been held. Two wider open meetings have been run to engage broader rural community representatives.

The emerging Local Action Groupshave begun to consider the key issues and actions arising from the consultation and to engage with the process by which the Local Development Strategy is being drafted.