The England Rural Development Programme

The England Rural Development Programme (ERDP) sets out how the Government is implementing the Rural Development Regulation - otherwise known as the 'second pillar' of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The Programme will cost £1.6 billion between 2000 and 2006 and will address economic, social and environmental needs within the countryside through ten co-ordinated grant-aid measures. These include schemes to conserve and improve the environment and schemes to enable farming, forestry and other rural businesses and communities adapt to changing circumstances and develop.

DEFRA is responsible for administering and directing the Programme with the assistance of a National Strategy Group. English Heritage belongs to this group, alongside the other statutory conservation and countryside agencies and representatives of other government departments.

Each regional team within English Heritage has identified an officer to lead on the ERDP within each of our regional offices outside London. These regional ERDP leads also sit on the English Heritage Rural Affairs Strategy Group, which is convened by the Rural & Environmental Policy Team and which contributes to the formulation of our countryside policy.

One of the five key national priorities for the ERDP is:

To conserve and enhance rural landscapes and the diversity and abundance of wildlife (including the habitats on which it depends), to safeguard their integrity and value for future generations and to provide a source of economic opportunity.

Specific ERDP policies relating to landscape and the historic environment are:

• the safeguarding and enhancing of the landscape character and local distinctiveness of the wider countryside to attain targets or solve problems identified in regional Countryside Character descriptions;

• the protection and enhancement though appropriate management of historic and archaeological features of international, national and local importance, and their settings, in particular by:

• Conservation and repair of ancient monuments and landscapes at risk;

• Repair of rural historic buildings at risk, appropriate adaptive re-use of functionally redundant buildings and maintenance of the diversity of local vernacular features;

• Maintenance and repair of traditional man-made and semi-natural features such as hedgerows and dry stone walls;

• the conservation and enhancement of nationally important landscapes and landscapes close to where people live;

• the securing of favourable collaborative management of the cultural and historic features and the valued landscapes and habitats of commons as a national resource.

Guidance on the England Rural Development Programme is available from the DEFRA website: http://www.defra.gov.uk/erdp/erdphome.htm