Issues in the rural East Midlands
The characteristics of rural areas, their landscapes, economies, communities and distinctiveness often mean that there needs to be particular rural policies and action plans drawn up. The existing regional rural documents for the East Midlands have helped to shape decisions over the last few years and the priorities they identified are likely to be carried forward as these strategies are reviewed.

Although there were relatively few cases of infection in the East Midlands, the impact of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease across the country in 2001-2002 brought into focus many of the issues that rural communities in the East Midlands had faced over a number of years:

• uncertainty over the future of the agricultural sector
  
• the relative fragility of the rural tourism sector and its reliance on day visitors
  
• the extent to which many rural services, such as village shops and pubs, had few reserves on which to survive
  
• the reliance on self-employment and seasonal employment amongst rural residents
  
• the difficulty of access to training and business support mechanisms

In the East Midlands region emda, the Countryside Agency and Derbyshire Dales District Council commissioned research from DTZ Pieda Consulting to examine the impact of foot and mouth disease. To download a copy of the executive summary of this report click here.

This research recommended that the actions required should be taken forward by the East Midlands Rural Affairs Forum.

Measures of need in rural areas
Different approaches to assessing the state of rural areas and the needs of rural communities have been developed in recent years. These have resulted from the recognition that 'traditional' methods of measuring the physical qualities of an area and the well being of those living there have tended to have an 'urban' bias. For example, increased levels of car ownership have often been used as an indication of wealth but in a rural setting, a car is likely to be a household essential. Relatively high expenditure on running one or more cars will therefore not necessarily indicate a certain level of wealth and it might well mean a lack of resources available for other essential items.

The need to develop alternative indicators for rural areas has been reflected in work undertaken by The Countryside Agency over the last couple of years. A draft set of rural indicators has now been drawn up and this is to be developed for England as a whole.