Earlier this year, Eluned Morgan - the Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales - called for the Welsh Government to develop a specific economic strategy for rural Wales. Following this call to arms, a group of people with a track record of delivery across the rural economy was brought together to make some initial recommendations to the Welsh Government.
Their report “Rural Wales – time to meet the challenge 2025” was published last month and contains some critical findings and, more importantly, makes the case that the rural parts of this nation face a very different challenge to the South Wales Valleys, industrial North East Wales and the cities of Swansea, Newport and Cardiff.
This is especially in terms of the delivery of public services and in ensuring that rural areas get a fair share of both UK and Welsh government resources.
But whilst it is important to make the public sector more relevant to the needs of rural Wales, the economy will only grow if the private sector becomes more competitive and more productive.
In this respect, the report makes proposals on infrastructure, increasing skills and productivity, promoting food and farming, ensuring local jobs for local people and maximising tourism potential.
However, given my role in creating and delivering the Wales Fast Growth 50, I was particularly pleased to see a number of suggestions to deliver growth amongst rural businesses which took into account the specific challenges they face.
In terms of providing business and learning support, it is proposed that technology is used to deliver modular, convenient and interactive training to businesses who want to establish themselves in Rural Wales and to support existing entities to grow.
With regard to finance, research has shown that the more rural the firm, the more difficult it is to gain access to funding. Given this, there is a role for the new Development Bank for Wales to deliver easier access to funding at preferential rates for business, especially for longer term loans. This is especially in terms of the provision of loans to those microbusinesses that make up much of rural Wales and have been largely ignored by Finance Wales in previous years.
In addition to supporting existing businesses, there is a real need to boost levels of entrepreneurship especially as recent statistics have shown that the start-up rate in rural Wales is significantly below that of Wales and the UK.
Given this, there needs to be greater appreciation that entrepreneurs can succeed across rural wales and that government initiatives, such as BeTheSpark.com, need to highlight not only urban success stories.
Other things that can be done to support a greater shift towards self-employment in and around the villages of Rural Wales is greater consideration for appropriate housing and co-working locations in future Local Development Plans. Rural bursaries should also be established to support young people looking to set up their own business in rural areas and to stop them thinking that they can only be enterprising in metropolitan areas.
Finally, the reform of planning guidance and culture across local authorities in Wales is critical to ensure that businesses are promoted and nurtured, especially in adapting Local Development Plans to ensure this happens.
In particular, there must be greater flexibility where appropriate on building control, licensing, procurement and trading standards with a view to ensuring that investors - both those within the area and those thinking of moving in - understand that Rural Wales is “open for business”. However, this must also ensure appropriate and sustainable economic development for both current and future generations and in particular those individuals and workers who have lived in the area for a number of years.
Finally, whilst there have been a number of enterprise zones created in rural Wales by the Welsh Government, these must be expanded to introduce specific tax incentives around key hubs and market towns.
Therefore, whilst largely urban regions around Swansea and Cardiff have receiving billions of pounds of support through City Deals, very little has been done to support rural Wales. As the report notes, there is no time to lose to address this deficiency and it is critical that the Welsh Government finally puts together a plan that ensures rural Wales has the ability to flourish economically in the future and continues to be a viable environment for both young and old people to live and work.