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From community to brigade: the changing role of fire [cover] and rescue services in rural places

From community to brigade: the changing role of fire [cover] and rescue services in rural places

While the core work of fire and rescue services has always been firefighting, they also respond to a wide variety of other incidents – from flooding and road traffic accidents to people stuck in machinery. When someone dials 999 they are experiencing a crisis that could be life threatening; and they require and expect a timely emergency response. National guidelines that set response times for fire calls were first formulated by the Riverdale Committee back in 1936. They have been modified a number of times since then. If firefighting and emergency response is every bit as dangerous in rural areas as in urban areas, how can we ensure resources are deployed in ways that take account of rural communities? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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What is fire cover – and how has it been provided in rural places? Fire cover principally involves siting fire appliances in locations which best serve local conditions and meet nationally set standards of fire cover. Determining the optimum sites for resources – and how to do this in rural places – has evolved over time.  

When the Royal Commission on Fire Brigades and Fire Prevention published its report back in 1923 it was of the view that “there are certain parts of the country which it would be uneconomic to protect, such as the hilly areas of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the Cotswold range of hills in Gloucester, or some of the mountainous districts in Wales and the Highlands of Scotland” (page 40). And yet, a civil servant called Arthur Dixon vowed to improve the provision of fire services in rural areas and two pilot schemes were set up in North Derbyshire and Norfolk. The schemes depended on Local Authorities in these areas cooperating through a joint board that could raise funds by a rate and make payments to participating brigades on a ‘fixed’ or ‘fee per fire attended’ basis. The pilot in Norfolk depended on the boy scouts identifying and preparing water supplies; and the North Derbyshire scheme resulted in a disproportionate contribution being made by authorities in towns to cross-subsidise provision in rural areas. At the end of the pilot period the Government decided the schemes would not address fire cover in other rural areas. However in North Derbyshire a ‘penny levy’ continued to fund the scheme until the Second World War. 

In 1935, Arthur Balfour was appointed Chair of the Departmental Commission on Fire Brigade Services (known as the Riverdale Committee) – and his work led to the Fire Brigades Act 1938. The Act placed, for the first time, a statutory duty on Local Authorities to provide a fire service. The Act also required areas to be categorised according to their perceived level of risk – and this specified a minimum response times to fire calls. Four main categories of risk emerged: ‘A’ risks were those located in cities or towns (e.g. large shopping, business and entertainment centres); ‘B’ risks were situated in cities and towns not falling within category A (e.g. smaller-scale shopping and business districts); ‘C’ risks were found in the suburbs of larger towns and parts of smaller towns with built-up areas of substantial size; and  finally ‘D’ risks included all other areas not falling into categories A to C, except remote rural. ‘Remote Rural’ areas were classified as ‘those areas isolated from centres of population and containing few buildings’. Attendance times were specified for risk categories A to D – from 3 pumps attending a category A and the first pump arriving within 5 minutes; through to 1 pump attending within 20 minutes for a category D. While some rural areas fitted into category D, there were no nationally recommended attendance times for Remote Rural areas. 

The Riverdale Committee resulted in a model of risk where the lowest category was deemed ‘rural areas with scattered villages and hamlets’ – with these areas requiring an appliance to arrive within 20 minutes. The focus of the risk modelling was on saving property. In practice, these attendance times were difficult to implement in rural areas. Swathes of the countryside at that time had no fire service at all – with some areas providing equipment in sheds for local people to tackle the fire until an appliance arrived but the majority establishing fire posts with hand appliances. Fire extinguishing sat within parishes and rural district councils. 

All of this led to debates about fire cover rules which had been drawn up to prioritise protecting buildings rather than lives and led to a disproportionate amount of funding being provided to urban areas – despite rates of death from fire correlated with attendance times and found to be higher in remote rural areas. 

Until the 1970s, fire safety legislation was a spread over many pieces of primary and secondary legislation. The Fire Precautions Act 1971 was intended to include all premises over time. Initially, a designating order was made for hotels, offices, retail, railway premises and factories. This led to the creation of the Fire Precaution (Workplace) Regulations in 1997. 

In June 1980, The Home Office published a Review of Fire Policy alongside a green paper for consultation. This contained proposals ‘to enable an adequate level of fire protection to be provided as economically as possible’. It recommended ‘greater selectivity in the attack on fire’, thereby targeting larger and more concentrated risks.  

In September 2002, the Government invited Professor Sir George Bain, Professor Sir Michael Lyons and Sir Tony Young, to consider the future organisation of the Fire and Rescue Service. Their report ‘the future of the fire service: reducing risk, saving lives’ described how retained services were providing fire cover for around 60% of the UK’s land area, mainly rural areas (page 39); how a typical rural brigade control room would have 4 staff on duty at all times and deal with 2 calls an hour leading to a call handling incident cost of £50 in rural areas compared to £18 for the London fire service (page 40); and the need to better recruit, support and retain rural firefighters (page 67). The report resulted in a White Paper that led to changes in the primary legislation for the operation of Fire and Rescue Services as well as changes to firefighter pay and conditions which led to industrial action at the time.    

The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 provides the main piece of current legislation under which fire and rescue services must operate. It sets out details of the statutory safety-orientated duties that fire authorities have. Beyond legislating for the duties and powers of fire and rescue authorities, the 2004 Act also introduced a Fire and Rescue National Framework. The Framework published in 2012 recognised the historic role of the service in putting out fires alongside increasing work on fire prevention. The Framework published in 2018 cited a significant decrease in the number of fires attended and to the testament of successful prevention and protection work. In July 2020, the Home Office published a progress report of Fire and Rescue Authorities’ compliance with the Framework. Each authority was required to provide assurance statements and, where appropriate, other documentation such as Integrated Risk Management Plans, Governance Statements and other operational and financial information. The report states: ‘having assessed this information, the Secretary of State is satisfied that every fire and rescue authority in England has acted in accordance with the requirements of the National Framework, and no formal steps have been taken by the Secretary of State since the last assurance statement in 2018 to secure compliance’. 

As policy and legislative frameworks have been updated, the environment in which fire and rescue services operate has changed – bringing different governance models, a new inspectorate and the creation of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC). While these frameworks set the overall strategic direction of fire and rescue authorities; authorities themselves remain free to operate in a way that ‘enables the most efficient and effective delivery of their services’. It is intended that fire and rescue authorities be accountable to their local communities rather than Government. Because the frameworks set high level expectations, they contain no specific references to rural which is viewed as an operational matter. Importantly, the 2004 legislation led to the abolition of national standards of fire cover, allowing local areas to set attendance targets. The Act also placed a statutory duty on authorities to promote fire safety and to manage community risk.  

Collaboration has become an increasingly important feature of fire and rescue work. Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Fire and Rescue authorities were designated ‘responsible authorities’. This means they are required to work alongside other responsible authorities such as Police, Councils, probation and clinical commissioning groups) on Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs). 

The Policing and Crime Act 2017 introduced a statutory requirement for fire, police and ambulance services to collaborate if it is in the interests of each of their efficiency and effectiveness to do so. The Act also established a means by which Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) could become directly involved in the governance of Fire and Rescue Services. This has led some PCCs to be redesignated Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners (PCPs). The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 provides a framework for organisations to plan and deal effectively with major emergencies. Here, Fire and Rescue Services are designated as ‘category 1 responders’ and are members are Local Resilience Forums (LRF). 

Following the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017 in which 72 people so tragically lost their lives, there has been intensive work across and beyond Government leading to: 

  • The introduction of a Fire Safety Bill to clarify the scope of the Fire Safety Order. 
  • The creation of a new Fire Protection Board chaired by the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC). 
  • Increased funding to Fire and Rescue Authorities and the NFCC to increase fire inspection and enforcement capability. 

The task of fire cover planning has changed over time – from a focus on protecting buildings in urban [A-C] and some rural areas [D]; to a prevention and protection response and integrated planning that focuses on saving lives. As fire service provision became set in statute, rural provision was sometimes viewed as needing fewer resources than their urban counterparts. With the abolition of national standards of fire cover and a preference for local target setting; calculating where to site appliances and fire fighters in rural areas needs to take account of the number and type of incidents, geography, the road network, resident needs, mobility (travel to work, visitors going to the countryside), other infrastructure and support available in rural places and the funding available. Locally set standards only apply to fire calls and fire and rescue services respond to many other incidents in rural places such as people stuck in equipment, animal rescues or floods alongside their prevention and protection work and for which there are no national targets or KPIs.   

How are Fire and Rescue Services governed, funded and delivered? And has this changed during COVID-19?  

All fire and rescue services are overseen by fire and rescue authorities (FRAs). There are 45 FRAs in England and the structure of each can slightly vary. Where a fire and rescue service shares a boundary with a single, upper tier council, the Local Authority is the fire authority and the FRS is an integral part of the authority alongside other public services. In other cases, where the FRS boundary covers more than one upper tier authority, a stand-alone Combined Fire Authority (CFA) is responsible for its governance. Other fire and rescue services cover airports, defence, royal properties, nuclear sites and ports.

FRAs must statutorily appoint a head of the paid service, a chief finance officer and a monitoring officer. FRAs are employing authorities that hire both uniformed (operational) staff and non-uniformed (support) staff. 

The funding available to FRAs is provided by Government through the local government finance settlement (revenue support grant) and council tax. FRAs may also raise funds through charging for some non-emergency services, commercial trading activities, and/or applying for grants/research funding for specific purposes. The FRAs then make the decision locally to allocate this money to the specific areas for which they are responsible: prevention, protection and emergency response.   

According to the NFCC and LGA, for the 29 standalone Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) in 2009-2010 core spending power was estimated at £1.523 million, falling to £1.373 million in 2020-2021, equating to a cut of 28.55% in real terms. Home Office data on reserve levels between March 2015 and March 2019 found reserves levels at some authorities had significantly reduced over this time period – including in Derbyshire (by 60%), Buckinghamshire (by 50%), Durham & Darlington (by 38%), Cleveland (by 36%) and Humberside (by 34%); while in other authorities reserve levels remained the same (e.g. Hampshire and Nottinghamshire); and increased in other areas (e.g. Leicestershire, Hereford & Worcester, Devon & Somerset and West Yorkshire). 

Analysis of the 2021-2022 local government finance settlement by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) found brigades will receive £1.6 million more funding in 2021-2022 compared to 2020-2021, an increase of 0.18% in cash terms (and below inflation of 0.8% CPI to December 2020), equating to £37,200 per brigade. The FBU’s analysis reveals that from 2016-2017 to 2021-2022:

  • 4 brigades have had their funding cut by more than one-third. West Sussex has lost £4.3 million (or 43.9%), Warwickshire £2.9 million (or 40.8%), Oxfordshire £3.2 million (or 38.2%), and Surrey £6.1 million (or 34.3%). 
  • A further 9 brigades have had their funding cut by more than £4 million, including Greater Manchester (£5.8 million or 10.2%), West Yorkshire (£4.8 million or 11.1%) and Devon and Somerset (£4.5 million or 16.8%).
  • 42 brigades have had their funding reduced by at least £1 million since 2016-2017 – with most brigades experiencing cuts of at least 10%.  

In March 2020, MHCLG announced emergency funding to Local Authorities in financial year 2020-2021 and additional support for 2021-2022. £28.5 million has been allocated to standalone Fire Authorities, with a further £6 million central fund made available to support services which are aiding Ambulance Services and coroners. For those sitting within county councils and unitary authorities, the additional funding is not ring fenced, with each authority setting the fire share. 

Retained firefighters are mostly based in rural areas, crewing one or two appliances at a retained fire station, with some based in urban areas on stations alongside wholetime crews. The Home Office publishes workforce statistics for England. Covering the period April 2019 to March 2020, the data reveals a headcount of 35,291 firefighters of whom 22,793 were wholetime firefighters and 12,498 on the retained duty system. Analysis by the FBU reveals that since 2010 some 3,000 retained firefighter roles have been lost (and 8,000 wholetime roles). Despite an overall increase in retained firefighter numbers in 2019, levels fell in a number of brigades including Staffordshire and Surrey.    

An Independent Review of conditions of service for fire and rescue staff back in 2015 found the retained system “offers significant opportunity to align resources to risk at a significantly lower cost that maintaining full time cover…However the difficulties in recruiting…[means] Government should bring forward legislation that extends employment protection (as enjoyed by military reservists) to firefighters engaged on retained duty systems and part-time contracts” (page 13).  Research in 2016 sought to explore the motivations and barriers that influence individuals in urban and rural areas from becoming retained firefighters. This found people in rural areas had very specific motivators compared to their urban counterparts – with people living in rural areas wanting to help their local community. The NFCC  has an employee guide setting out the skills required, time needed and terms and conditions for retained (on-call) firefighters. 

In 2019-2020, 557,299 incidents were attended by FRSs in England – a 3% decrease compared with the previous year. Of all incidents attended, fire accounts for 28% of calls, with false alarms comprising 42% and non-fire incidents 31%. The total number of fires attended by FRSs has been decreasing over the past decade – from a peak of 474,000 in 2003-2004. Sadly, there were 243 fire-related fatalities in 2019-2020, the lowest figure since 1981-1982. For every one million people, there were 4.3 fire-related fatalities in 2019-2020. Over the same time period, FRSs and their partners completed 581,917 Home Fire Safety Checks (HFSCs) – 3% fewer than the previous year and 4% fewer than in the previous five year period. However, FRSs and their partners carried out 321,437 HFSCs targeted at people aged 65 years and over – this was 8% fewer than in the previous year but 32% greater than the five years previously. 

The Home Office publishes fire statistics covering fires, false alarms, other incidents attended by fire crews, fatalities and casualties and response times. In relation to average response times, the data can be broken down by authority/geography and the Rural Urban Classification. This reveals for predominantly rural areas in 2019-2020, there were 10,671 primary fires and a response time of 10 minutes and 28 seconds; and for significantly rural areas 16,356 primary fires and a response time of 9 minutes 53 seconds. In predominantly urban areas there were 34,705 primary fires and a response time of 7 minutes 37 seconds. Primary fires are those where one or more of the following apply: i) all fires in buildings, outdoor structures and vehicles that are not derelict, ii) any fires involving casualties or rescues, iii) any fire attended by five or more appliances. The data spans a 10-year period and reveals how response times in predominantly urban areas have remained constant [around 7 minutes] while slightly increasing in predominantly rural areas (from 9 minutes 41 seconds in 2009-2010 to the current 10 minutes 28 seconds) and in significantly rural areas (from 8 minutes 44 seconds in 2009-2010 to the current 9 minutes 53 seconds).  

In January 2021, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published its report into the fire and rescue service’s response during the COVID-19 pandemic This found: 

  • Every service maintained its ability to respond to fires and other emergencies – with responding to emergencies prioritised over other protection and prevention activities. The overall number of incidents attended fell by 5% from 1 April to 30 June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. 43 of 45 services had more fire engines available to respond to calls from 1 April to 30 June 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. 
  • Every service provided a range of additional support to its community that went above and beyond its statutory duties – with wholetime, retained and operational staff carrying out a wide range of support roles such as ambulance driving and food delivery.  
  • On-call [retained] firefighters were extensively deployed during the first wave of the pandemic to respond to emergencies – and their capacity to respond increased as some were furloughed from their primary employment or working from home. On-call firefighters were willing to work flexibly to fulfil a range of roles and services took steps to mitigate any financial hardship faced by individuals (e.g. offering them paid employment or short-term contracts if their primary employment was affected by the pandemic). 
  • The pandemic has been a catalyst for change and transformation – with staff redeployed and new IT and supporting infrastructure delivered [taking days rather than weeks or months to implement].   
  • Structural problems affected the way services operated during the pandemic – including the need to put in place the arrangements to carry out additional responsibilities to support partner agencies. Some chief fire officers did not have operational independence to allocate resources rapidly. But the Inspectorate highlighted how the sector came together through the NFCC to provide a coordinated response. 

Central Government has historically been the main source of funding for fire and rescue services, but in recent years fire and rescue services have increasingly turned to council tax, making savings and/or dipping into reserves to set their budgets. With Government recently allocating more funding to fire and rescue will this lead to longer-term and more sustainable funding for FRAs? Retained firefighters have other employment but respond to incidents from their homes or workplace as required. In many rural areas, they provide the only source of fire and rescue cover. What more can be done to attract, recruit and keep retained firefighters? How can the contribution retained firefighters make be better understood, recognised and valued? How can we develop a better understanding of the work of FRSs in rural areas – and the services residents want and can expect? Throughout COVID-19, fire and rescue services maintained their ability to respond to fires and other emergencies whilst stepping up to take on a range of pandemic related tasks. There is now an imperative to restore public services while remaining prepared for future waves of the virus. What should guide restoration and recovery planning in the fire and rescue sector?  

Like parts of the UK; Australia, Austria, China, France, Germany and the United States also rely upon volunteer firefighters in rural areas. In Australia, for example, they are known as ‘firies’ and they played a pivotal role in tackling unprecedented bushfires in 2019-2020.  Approximately 195,000 Australians volunteer with the country’s 6 State and 2 Territory bushfire services – or 4.5% of the total rural population. In Queensland, for example, the Rural Fire Service (RFS) is made up of 36,000 volunteers – including 2,400 fire wardens sitting within 1,500 rural brigades. In New South Wales, the RFS is running a number of initiatives with farmers to help mitigate and respond to the threat of fires (e.g. farm fire plans, farm fire units, rural liaison officers). While funding varies by area, it is generated through state and territory levies – this pays for stations, vehicles, running costs, administration and training. As a result of the bushfires, some fire services have received public donations – with some of the money being used to help volunteers who had to take leave without pay. 

The United States has a dedicated Rural Firefighting Academy (RFA). Developed by rural firefighters for rural firefighters, the RFA offers e-learning courses and publishes the ‘Rural Firefighting No Nonsense Handbook’. The RFA believes that fire departments need to communicate with the public and let them determine the level of emergency service they are willing to support.  In rural areas, access to (and getting enough) water to the scene efficiently, recruiting and retaining enough volunteers, responding to different kinds of emergency incidents and working across rural fire departments (e.g. pooling training and planning sessions) are all more apparent compared to urban brigades.  

In New Zealand, alongside responding to fires, Fire and Emergency NZ runs a Fire Smart initiative to help rural residents protect their home and property, and understand the response time of rural firefighters and first response units.  

Finally, the Brandweeracademie (Fire Service Academy) in the Netherlands recently carried out a European research project looking at the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters. This considered the role of task differentiation i.e., meaning that a volunteer can be trained for specific tasks reducing the amount of time they spend on volunteering; and providing employers with benefits and rewards so staff can volunteer to go out to call.  

What can we share with, and learn from, fire service organisation and delivery in other countries? How can we further develop community fire planning that identifies and address the needs of our rural communities (e.g. utilise data, consult with all members of rural communities, implement solutions – building safety, vulnerable residents – and monitor and evaluate initiatives)? And how can we ensure we have the workforce and equipment we need to respond to fire (and non-fire) calls in a timely and efficient manner in rural areas?  

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Thank you to all the RSN readers who contacted me following May’s rural words on oral health / dentistry. From requests for more data on the number of courses of treatment delivered by Urgent Care Hubs and people telling me how they had been removed from practice lists because they had not attended an appointment in the last two-years (even though you had been requesting one); through to those of you unable to restart treatment that began before the pandemic and/or being forced to pay for private treatment because you were in so much pain and the NHS waiting list so long. As a frequent user of dental services myself [though less frequent since COVID] I tried my very best to respond to all of your emails. Like many of you I too look forward to providers returning to their ‘normal contracted activity’. Thank you for all of your insights and feedback.   

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). Her current work includes supporting health commissioners and providers to measure their response to COVID-19 and with future planning; and evaluating two employability programmes helping people furthest from the labour market. She has previously worked with two Fire and Rescue Services to evaluate their community safety programmes. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older and vulnerable people. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/https://www.ncrhc.org/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Freeports

Where does rural fit in the Government’s brand-new Freeport policy?

The Government wants to level up the UK by ensuring that towns, cities and regions across the country can benefit from global trade, inward investment and employment opportunities. In drawing on evidence from across the world, the Government is intending to create freeports across the UK. What does the UK freeports model look like and what might it mean for rural and coastal communities? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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What are freeports? Freeports are ‘secure customs zones located at ports where business can be carried out inside a country’s land border, but where different customs rules apply. They can reduce administrative burdens and tariff controls, provide relief from duties and import taxes, and ease tax and planning regulations.’ In practice this means goods imported into a freeport are exempt from customs duties until they leave the freeport. If raw materials are brought into a freeport and processed into a final product before entering the domestic market, duties are only paid on the final goods. And if the goods are re-exported no duty is payable. Thus, while freeports are within a country’s geographical borders, they are outside that country’s customs border (illustrated in the diagram below). 

(Freeports consultation document, February 2020, page 9)

The concept of freeports is not new and dates back centuries – from when traders operated off ships, moved cargo, and then reexported goods with little or no restrictions from authorities. More recently, freeports can be traced back to the 1960s and the establishment of ‘free zones’ adjacent to seaports and airports. The first free economic zone launched in Taiwan in 1966 and this was followed by Singapore in 1969 and South Korea in 1970. Freeports then diverged into several concepts – with the World Bank categorising free trade zones (FTZ), export processing zones (EPZ) and special economic zones (SEZ). 

Here, a commitment to freeports was included in the 2019 Conservative Manifesto. Under ‘strengthen the union’, the manifesto sought to create new freeports to ensure ‘many places across the United Kingdom…have the opportunity to be successful innovative hubs for global trade’ (page 44); and ‘as part of our commitment to making the most of the opportunities of Brexit, and levelling up the nation, we will create up to ten freeports around the UK, benefiting some of our most deprived communities’ (page 57). In his first speech as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019, the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP said “so let us begin work now to create freeports that will drive growth and thousands of high-skilled jobs in left behind areas.” On 2 August 2019 HM Treasury and the Department for International Trade announced the creation of a Freeports Advisory Panel to advise the Government on the establishment of up to ten freeports. The panel is advising the Government on the future design and operation of freeports as part of a future bidding process. The Government also held a series of industry roundtables to explore the different policy levers that could form part of a free zone offer and how best to develop a model that fits the UK. 

Where are freeports? Countries around the world have adapted the model shown in the diagram above in operating freeports. For example, some have created tax incentives to drive investment in freeports, while others have reduced regulation or made infrastructure improvements around their freeports. There is no globally agreed upon definition of a freeport, which makes stating a definitive number of them and their locations difficult. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has opted to use the term SEZs to apply to all types of freeport. In June 2019 the UNCTAD published data on SEZs, finding at least 5,383 in 147 economies; of which 105 SEZs were in Europe. In developed economies (i.e., Europe and North America), most SEZs are customs-free zones and their role is to provide relief from tariffs and from administrative customs procedures, in order to support complex cross-border supply chains. In contrast, in developing economies the primary aim of SEZs is on attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). According to the UNCTAD more than 1,000 zones have been launched over the past five-years, and a further 500 are planned. 

According to United States Congressional Research Service (CRS), as of 2018, there were some 195 Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZs) active in the United States during the year, with a total of 330 manufacturing operations. All States had at least one zone. The zone system accounted for 10% of all imports entering the United States, employing approximately 440,000 workers (or 3% of US manufacturing workers). The approximate location of FTZs is shown on the map below:  

(Congressional Research Service, U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones: Background and
Issues for Congress, December 2019, page 8). 

Between 2000 and 2018, the total value of goods received in FTZs increased from $238 billion to $794 billion. This was attributed to more goods entering US FTZs being of domestic status (i.e., goods that were produced in the US and good that have been produced abroad but entered the US customs territory for consumption); and the benefits associated with duty reduction on inverted tariff situations, customs inventory control efficiencies, and duty exemptions on exports. The FTZ Board grants authority to applicants to establish, operate and maintain zones. Once a zone has been established, the organisation that applied for the zone – which can be a public or private entity – is known as the grantee and responsible for providing the facility in line with FTZ regulations and reporting to the FTZ board on an annual basis. 

In 2018 China had 2,543 zones – more than half the world’s total. Their origins can be traced back to April 1979 and the creation of four special zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen. Today, Shanghai alone has 36 special zones ranging from industrial estates and export processing zones to hi-tech parks and an automobile city. 

Source: https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-free-trade-zones-six-provinces/

These zones have seen the Chinese Government introduce market-orientated reforms; acted as catalysts for allocating domestic resources; and attracted international capital, technology, technical and managerial expertise to stimulate industrial development. It is estimated that SEZs have contributed 22% to China’s GDP, 45% of total national FDI, and 60% of exports. SEZs are also estimated to have created over 30 million jobs.  

Within the European Union, members of the customs territory may designate areas as ‘free zones.’ These are enclosed areas where non-Union goods can be introduced free of import duty, other charges (i.e., taxes) and commercial policy measures. There are currently 80+ free zones located within Europe – with the current list of states with zones including Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Spain. Many were originally set up as spaces to store goods in transit and simplify commercial operations.  

Other examples of freeports include the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai and Le Freeport, Singapore. 

There are currently no freeports in the UK, although there is one on the Isle of Man [a British crown dependency that is neither part of the UK or EU]. HM Treasury has powers to designate freeports by Statutory Instrument under Section 100A of the Customs and Management Act (CEMA) 1979. Seven freeports did operate in the UK between 1984 and 2012 and were focused on customs benefits. In 2012, the five remaining freeports – at Liverpool, Prestwick, Sheerness, Southampton and Tilbury – ended when the statutory instruments lapsed. 

A bespoke UK freeport model? In February 2020 the Department for International Trade published a consultation on Government proposals to establish freeports. In the document, the Government set out its aim to create up to 10 freeports across the UK: “These will be innovative hubs which boost global trade, attract inward investment and increase prosperity in the surrounding area by generating employment opportunities in some of our most deprived communities.” Under the strapline ‘boosting trade, jobs and investment across the UK’, the proposals have 4 objectives: (1) to enhance trade and investment across the UK; (2) to boost growth and highly-skilled jobs; (3) to signal that the UK is an attractive trade and investment location and open to business; and (4) to rebalance the economy and regenerate left behind areas. 

During the consultation Government was seeking responses to 68 questions covering the following themes:  

  • Territorial scope – some policies relate to the whole of the UK, as well as some which are devolved. The Government intends to work in partnership with devolved administrations to develop the creation of freeports in all four nations. 
  • Tariffs – how will tariff inversion and deferral in freeports boost growth and facilitate trade? 
  • Customs – how could a freeport give businesses access to tariff inversion and deferral at lower administration costs than currently available? 
  • Tax – what tax and financial incentives have the best evidence for being effective at maximising the economic opportunities of freeports? 
  • Planning – how will specific planning freedoms for freeports maximise jobs and growth in their regions? 
  • Innovation – how can freeports deliver high-value jobs to surrounding areas and create hubs that link to academic and research institutions? 
  • Regeneration – How can Government / devolved administrations facilitate trade and investment? 

In October 2020 the Government published its response to the consultation. 364 responses were received, and the document provides greater clarity about how freeports will operate across the UK. It describes how the UK Freeport model will maximise geographic flexibility and apply to areas with seaports, airports and rail ports, and to regions featuring multiple ports – no mode of port or area is excluded. The model will require a primary customs site designated in or near a port of any mode, and this can include sites in inland locations, so long as an economic relationship can be clearly demonstrated between the site and the port. Where bidders can make an economic case that they are required, the Government will allow multiple additional customs sites (known as ‘customs subzones’) to enable numerous sites to benefit from the customs model. Freeports will also include a single contiguous defined site within which tax reliefs will apply, building on the approach taken for existing Enterprise Zones in England and Wales. The primary customs site, tax site, and any additional subzones shall all be contained by an outer boundary. All measures (including any customs subzones and the planning, regeneration spending and innovation measures) should be applied within this outer boundary to ensure freeports are coherent, with a clear economic and geographic focus.

What are the benefits? Freeports are intended to stimulate economic activity – in both their designated area (e.g. through tax breaks) and more widely (i.e., through agglomeration effects). Some commentators distinguish between direct economic benefits (e.g. employment generation, export growth, foreign direct investment and increased Government revenue within the host country) and indirect economic benefits (e.g. export diversification, upgrading skills technology transfer).

In the United States, The Trade Partnership has measured the economic effects of FTZs on the communities in which the zones operate. They carried out a study to model changes for three economic measures [employment, wages and value added] in the FTZs compared to a similar economic community in the same region without a FTZ. The analysis reveals how all three economic measures increase in the broader community following the establishment of an FTZ and are greatest in the early years for employment and wages, and throughout the period for value added. For example, the establishment of the FTZ leads to an increase in employment growth (0.2%) and wage growth (0.4%) in years six and later and value-added growth (0.3%) eight years later. The study also found company access to FTZ benefits delivered wider effects through their supply chains located nearby (e.g. jobs, research and development, worker training).   

Back in the UK, a Centre for Policy Studies report by Rushi Sunak MP in 2016 took the total number of jobs across the then 250 FTZs in the US (420,000), estimated these were additional jobs, and then adjusted for the size of the UK labour force to suggest the introduction of free zones in the UK would have the potential to create 86,000 jobs. 

In 2018, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Freeports endorsed the concept of ‘supercharged freeports’ as a model which Government could pursue to integrate freeports with Enterprise Zones to stimulate business growth, inward investment and support for new and expanding firms. Similarly, a trade campaign coalition, Port Zones UK, comprising airport and seaport operators is calling on the Government to grant special economic status to airports and seaports. An insights report by MACE in 2018 predicted an ‘optimistic scenario’ of gains from an assumed first-round price effect (i.e. a 1% decrease in the price of imports and exports leading to a 1% increase in the quantity of imports after 10 years) and also from induced agglomeration effects within the free zone zones (a boost in trade impacts of +150%). With an assumption that a 1% increase in trade translates to a 0.75% increase in gross value added (GVA) this would lead to a £12 billion boost in trade and a £9 billion increase in GVA. In turn, assuming that free zones activities lead to a creation of high-value-added jobs averaging £60,000 per job, a £9 billion increase in GVA would lead to the creation of 150,000 new jobs. 

More recently, the benefits and opportunities around freeports in the UK have been framed around:  

  1. The Levelling up agenda: a means of reviving disadvantaged towns and cities by attracting new investment, supporting enterprise and innovation, and creating new, skilled, jobs that local people can benefit from.  
  2. Our departure from the EU: creating fresh impetus for a new and innovative domestic growth policy. Port Zones, for example, would bring together enterprise zones, development zones and free trade zones with the aim of stimulating international investment, reshoring manufacturing and lowering prices for consumers in a post-Brexit future. 
  3. COVID-19 recovery: Data collected by the British Ports Association (BPA) found 55% of ports were not satisfied with the mechanisms and funding available to them during the pandemic. In response, the BPA is calling for medium term cash flow and business support, scaling up infrastructure and a bold freeports policy and port zoning strategy – including calling on Government not to cap the designation to 10 sites. A policy briefing from the Kiel Institute for The World Economy in April 2020 found almost all free zones were being adversely affected by the pandemic, through domestic measures to contain the virus, a drop in global demand, supply chain disruptions and/or a deterioration in the financial environment.    

What are the risks? A survey undertaken as part of the UNCTAD team’s review of all 5,400 zones revealed that 22% were regarded as ‘heavily under-utilised/largely vacant’; a further 25% were ‘somewhat under-utilised or vacant’; and just 13% were ‘fully utilised’. The review states: “even where zones have successfully generated investment, jobs and exports, the benefits to the broader economy – a key part of their rationale – have often been hard to detect…Many zones operate as enclaves, with few links to local suppliers and few spill overs” (page 129). The review also found growth in SEZs between 2007 and 2012 was, on average, 2-5% lower than national GDP growth; therefore, suggesting these zones provide temporary stimulus during their development phase, with no direct correlation between incentives and export or job generation. 

The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) also signals caution around evidence of the wider economic benefits of freeports. They query previous research claiming free zones in the UK could generate up to 150,000 new jobs, add £9 billion a year to the UK economy and narrow the North-South divide because a smaller proportion would be genuine additional jobs and economic activity rather than just redistributed from elsewhere in the UK. They cite research on Enterprise Zones carried out by the Centre for Cities which found a total of 13,000 jobs had been ‘created’ between 2012 and 2017 as opposed to the 54,000 predicted, and how these were gross rather than net. Most of these jobs were in warehousing and similar and could make little contribution to long-term regeneration. The UKTPO has analysed three different approaches to tax inversion which allows importers to take advantage of the fact that they do not pay tariffs on intermediate goods imported into a Freeport, with a tariff being payable if a finished good leaves the FTZ leaves and enters the rest of the country after processing takes place. Regardless of the approach taken the analysis found introducing freeports in the UK would be unlikely to generate any significant benefits to businesses in terms of duty savings. Tariffs on intermediates tend to be low in the UK, typically lower than tariffs on final goods, which rules out duty savings in most cases. In addition, in those sectors for which they were able to identify any inversion, researchers predicted the benefits would be small and not have any material impact on the UK economy. There could only be large benefits from freeports, the UKTPO argues, if they were accompanied by generous tax or infrastructure benefits or major deregulation. 

In 2019 the European Commission published an assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risks affecting the internal market and relating to cross border activities. The report describes how freeports ‘may pose a risk as regards counterfeiting, as they allow counterfeiters to land consignments, adapt or otherwise tamper with loads or associated paperwork, and then re-export products without customs intervention, and thus to disguise the nature and original supplier of the goods. The misuse of free-trade zones may be related with infringing intellectual property rights, and engaging in VAT fraud, corruption and money laundering. In most EU free ports or customs warehouses, precise information on the beneficial owners is not available’ (page 5). These findings build on an earlier study from the European Parliamentary Research Service which looked at the freeport in Luxembourg and its (semi-) permanent storage of art and other high value assets and the introduction of anti-money laundering rules five-years earlier than planned. In January 2020, the EU introduced the fifth Anti Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5) in response to new levels of sophistication money laundering had attained and this now means Member States have to take extra measures to identify and report suspicious activities at the ports and zones.  

What do freeports mean for rural and coastal communities? An article in the Financial Times in July 2020 suggested at least 21 locations were interested in becoming freeports. These included London Gateway, Bristol, Milford Haven, Liverpool, the Humber, Southampton, an area of South Wales, Tees Valley, Tyneside, East Midlands airport and Doncaster-Sheffield airport. Heathrow airport was reported to be interested in associated freeport status linking with another site.

In its report ‘ a licence to operate’, Port Zones UK included a case study of the Port of Milford Haven and Pembrokeshire. The report presents a stark picture of what might happen in Pembrokeshire if nothing is done to replace the oil and gas cargo flows and associated processing facilities, but also what could be achieved through some considered intervention, such as the creation of a free trade zone (FTZ) encompassing the area that currently forms the Haven Waterway Enterprise Zone. The report’s authors argue that the Port of Milford Haven’s internationally significant energy sector, large fishing port, abundant natural capital and associated infrastructure means it would not displace logistics or manufacturing from other ports where these activities are more prevalent. Ports UK is calling on the Government to accelerate planning processes, simplify legal and regulatory requirements so as to increase the viability of key anchor businesses and boost growth along the supply chain. The report further suggests that investment in the Port area could empower economic growth in Pembrokeshire’s rural economy and be more effective than previous ‘subsidy’ programmes the region has received in the past. Written evidence submitted by the Port of Milford Haven to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee suggested freeports status could help the wider Pembrokeshire economy as it would: (i) attract domestic and international investments contributing to business competitiveness; (ii) promote and accelerate low carbon innovation and creativity, improving labour supply and skills retention; (iii) improve transport technologies and other infrastructure in the region through targeted funding; and, (iv) contribute to regeneration in the region, strengthening the County’s brand and image. 

How will freeports contribute to levelling-up, place-shaping and recovery from COVID-19 in ways that will benefit people and businesses in rural and coastal communities? How will freeports take account of geography (port-inland), communities (skills, housing), and infrastructure (broadband, road and rail links), in determining where they are located and driving benefits outside of their immediate footprint? The economic benefits of these zones around the world are often based on calculations or models – how will we track how their benefits (and the risks) in the UK? For example, what local employment will they create or sustain (i.e., high quality, highly skilled jobs or low-wage, low-skilled positions? What will the wage levels be? What types of contracts will workers be offered?) What new economic activity will they create or sustain – within the zone and in the wider economy – and how can they avoid displacing activities and investments from other businesses in the area? 

From the UEA to the USA, and from China to Europe, over the past few decades the numbers and locations of freeports have expanded across the globe. In the UK, the Freeport Bidding Prospectus will be published by Government in the autumn and the Bidding Process for locations to become a Freeport in England will open by the end of 2020. What will this ‘brand-new, best-in-class, bespoke’ model look like in rural and coastal areas? And what will it mean for communities and businesses? Watch this space. 

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). Her current work includes supporting health commissioners and providers to measure their response to COVID-19 and with future planning; working with 8 farm support groups across England on a Defra funded resilience programme; and helping 3 places to develop proposals for a Town Deal. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older and vulnerable people. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/https://www.ncrhc.org/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Geospatial

If we want to be powered by place, what can geospatial data tell us about rural areas?

Location shapes the way we live, work and socialise. Geospatial data, also known as location-based data, is commonly seen as a foundation upon which a wide range of services can be developed and delivered. Geospatial data has been used to respond to COVID-19, from modelling the transmission of the virus, through to predicting populations more vulnerable to its spread and their nearest healthcare facility. In July 2020 the Geospatial Commission, part of the Cabinet Office, published a Geospatial Strategy. The Commission is calling for a coherent national location data network by 2025. If location data is going to connect people to things, systems and places; what might this mean for rural areas? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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What is geospatial data? According to the Geospatial Commission, location data or geospatial data is a ‘record of what we do, and where we do it. It tells us where people and objects are in relation to a particular geographic location, whether in the air, on the ground, at sea or under our feet.’ Geospatial data can provide information on specific places (such as a building or railway line); or larger geographic areas including towns, counties, or countries. It offers information about a location that can be static in the short-term (e.g. an earthquake) or dynamic (e.g. a pandemic). It brings together location information (coordinates on earth) with attribute information (the characteristics of the phenomena), and temporal information (its life span). 

Commentators have increasingly recognised the value of geospatial data, often using it to build models of what is, or is likely, to happen in a given location(s) and/or over time. For example, the ambulance service turning up quickly at the right place, avoiding traffic congestion, and knowing which hospital to transport a patient to. For Local Authorities geospatial data can be used to deliver more effective public services and ensures resources are deployed in the right places. For central Government it supports policy design, implementation, and evaluation – and responding to emergencies. 

Geospatial data can come from private businesses, public sector bodies, or voluntary and community sector organisations. The Geospatial Commission divides geospatial data into four categories: (1) foundational – information where location is key and the purpose of its use; (2) positional – datasets describing activities or objects grounded in a particular place; (3) identifiers –linking different datasets using location as a common reference point; and (4) services – higher level insights involving layers of various location data.  

What is the Geospatial Commission?  The Autumn Budget 2017 referred to the establishment of a Geospatial Commission to ‘maximise the growth of the digital economy and consolidate the UK’s position as the best place to start and grow a digital business.’ The Commission would provide strategic oversight to the various public bodies that hold such data. The Geospatial Commission itself was established in 2018 as ‘an independent, expert committee responsible for setting the UK’s geospatial strategy and coordinating public sector geospatial activity.’ It aims to unlock the economic, social and environmental opportunities offered by location data and to boost the UK’s global geospatial expertise. Sitting within the Cabinet Office, the Commission provides (i) strategic oversight of the geospatial ecosystem in the UK, setting geospatial strategy, policy and standards; (ii) holds a budget for public sector investment in geospatial data; and (iii) makes targeted investments in data projects that accelerate innovation and adoption of geospatial data applications.

The Commission has a formal relationship with six core partners (known as the Geo6). They are: The British Geological Survey; The Coal Authority; HM Land Registry; Ordnance Survey; UK Hydrographic Office and The Valuation Office Agency. Each of these partners is charged with supporting the delivery of the UK’s Geospatial Strategy – both through the geospatial data they hold and the expertise they have. 

Since 2019, the Commission has completed two pilots in the North East of England and London to test a National Underground Asset Register (NUAR); negotiated a Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) worth £1 billion over 10 years; worked with Ordnance Survey to make MasterMap open data; released a set of Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) and Unique Street Reference Numbers (USRN); funded 10 projects through a crowdsourcing competition; and worked with the Geo6 to invest £5 million into a data improvement programme for public sector geospatial datasets. 

The Geo6 are currently working with the Commission on a ‘data discoverability’ project; developing a geospatial glossary, a framework for assessing authoritativeness, a data sharing risk assessment and updating the geospatial catalogue. The Commission is also working with Frontier Economics to better understand the geospatial data market. 

What is the Geospatial Strategy? Back in 2008, the then Department of Communities and Local Government [now MHCLG] published ‘place matters’, a Location Strategy for the UK. This document sought to maximise the value to the public, Government and UK businesses of geographic information. Against a backdrop of too few Government-owned datasets incorporating location able to be easily assembled and reliably analysed; the strategy was intended to provide a consistent framework for greater sharing and reuse of information across the public sector and beyond.  In so doing, the strategy built upon the Local Government White Paper and other reports including the Office of Fair Trading market study on the commercial use of public information.  The framework focused on five principal areas: (1) knowing what data we have; (2) using common reference data so we know we are all talking about the same places; (3) sharing common data through a common infrastructure of standards; (4) having the appropriate skills to use location data; and (5) strong leadership and governance to drive change. 

In 2010 the data.gov.uk portal was launched to help people find and use open government data. The site was redesigned in 2018 and the find open data service launched. In June 2010 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) published an Open Data Strategy (updated in 2013) and set up a transparency panel to oversee delivery. In June 2015 the then Secretary of State Liz Truss urged Defra and the agencies and public bodies within its network to release at least 8,000 datasets within one year – the organisations made 10,000+ datasets available under an open licence and has created a Data Services Platform. While Government was committed to location data, not every department made such a commitment and some government organisations were reluctant to do so because it would reduce their opportunities to generate revenue. Historically geospatial data has been fragmented across Government.     

‘Unlocking the power of potential’, the UK’s Geospatial Strategy 2020-2025, was published in June 2020. The strategy contains a vision that by 2025, the UK will have ‘a coherent national location data framework. Future technologies will be underpinned by data about events occurring at a time and place. Location data will be the unifying connection between things, systems, people and the environment.’ The strategy highlights trends around the proliferation of cheap location sensors, increased connectivity, cloud computing and the rise of artificial intelligence as well as the key challenges that need to be overcome (i.e., a fractured location data policy landscape). The strategy contains four strategic missions to address these challenges:  

  1. Promoting and safeguarding the use of location data to provide an evidenced view of the market value of location data, set clear guidelines on data access, privacy, ethics and security, and promote better use of location data. 
  2. Improving access to better location data to streamline, test and scale the development of new and existing location data ensuring it is findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable and of high quality.
  3. Enhancing skills, capabilities and awareness to develop more people with the right skills and tools to work with location data – across organisations and sectors – to meet the UK’s future needs and support global development.
  4. Enabling innovation to maximise the commercial opportunities for innovation and promote market-wide adoption of high-value emerging location technologies.

 The strategy contains location data opportunities across these missions, including those around: infrastructure, transport, housing, environment, public health, emergency response, ocean economy, retail and finance.  The Commission intends to monitor how the strategy generates economic, social and environmental value to inform its next steps. The strategy was developed alongside the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) and took account of similar work undertaken in the United States, Sweden, the Netherlands, Singapore, New Zealand and Ireland. 

How are public, private and community sector organisations using geospatial data? In local government circles, GeoPlace is a joint venture between the Local Government Association (LGA) and Ordnance Survey. This provides a single, definitive address database that holds millions of pieces of information based upon the National Street Gazetteer. In industry Hummingbird, a remote sensing and artificial intelligence business, is gathering imagery of arable fields and using machine learning techniques to provide targeted information so farmers can detect crop issues at an individual plant level and make decisions such as when to apply chemical inputs to increase yields and profit margins.  UbiPOS is designing a location platform to integrate different sensors for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV).   

More recently, geospatial data has played a key role in responding to COVID-19.  Ordnance Survey , for example, has been supporting public bodies to respond to the pandemic as part of its Mapping for Emergencies (MfE) service. Hackney Council has joined together Council and external data at a property level using UPRN to identify the most vulnerable residents in the borough.  Newport City Council used UPRN and NHS Wales data to identify and provide additional support to people in their area – and also distributed enhanced data to 22 other Local Authorities in Wales.  ESRI uses data from John Hopkins University coronavirus dashboard to map COVID-19 cases and deaths across the world. Maploom also uses John Hopkins University data to create an interactive map that allows you to interrogate the pandemic in a number of different ways (e.g. to select specific countries and compare the progression of the virus). 

As the impact of social distancing and self-isolation measures present both economic and practical challenges to a wide range of businesses and services; Innovate UK is currently investing up to £20 million in business projects to address the needs of society or industry resulting from COVID-19. 

What does geospatial data mean for rural places? Given the growing importance of, and focus on, geospatial information and the rapid expansion of data technologies and users, it is all-the-more-important that geospatial knowledge and information is available about rural areas. In an international context, for example, geospatial data is being used to map population distribution as part of attempts to address issues such as health epidemics, coordinate natural disaster responses, track environmental conservation and more. Some academics suggest that while advances have been made in urban population mapping, large gaps still exist for rural and remote populations. Back in the UK, datasets that cover rural areas are wide ranging, from air quality (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs/Northern Ireland) and field boundaries (Rural Payments Agency/England), through to countryside stewardship scheme agreements (Natural England/England) and housing and planning (Geospatial Commission/England). Defra also regularly publishes a Statistical Digest of Rural England.  

Yet much data remains scattered across different platforms, in different formats, with different indicators. If we want to use geospatial data to understand rural places, then firstly we first need to know what data we already have (i.e., foundational, positional, identifiers and services data), how it can be interrogated, and where the gaps are. Secondly, data is often collected by (or on behalf of) an organisation for a specific purpose without thinking through its wider applicability and significance, therefore we need to consider how these different strands can be brought together and tagged and structured in a way that makes it easier to interpret through a rural lens. Thirdly, we need to use data in a far more holistic way (rather than a silo or single-dimensional way) to better develop a picture of what it is like to live and work in different rural places. For example, how could we bring together information on housing stock, condition and affordability; broadband and mobile connectivity, speed and cost; level of poverty (for individuals, children, people of working age and older people); access to transport (car ownership, public transport, community transport schemes); demographic profile (while the proportion of older people living in rural areas is higher than in urban areas, does it become more difficult to live in a rural place when you are no longer able to drive / need to access health and care services?); stock of jobs, sectors, pay, employment levels, economic inactivity; and/or access to public services (e.g. primary care, secondary care, social care, ambulance, primary school, secondary school, FE college, post office, library, Jobcentre etc.) to start to build this picture? How could this be developed so we develop a better understanding of how rural places cluster together (around facilities and services),  who delivers services, how much money is spent and what resources have been deployed (or are needed), and how rural places are changing – and therefore what some of the opportunities, issues and challenges might be? 

Importantly, this is not always about collecting more data but rather looking at what data we already gather and how we can apply a rural lens. For example, the way statistical information on health outcomes is collected can mask deprivation and poorer health outcomes in rural areas. With support from Public Health England, academics at the University of East Anglia (UEA) developed a Rural Deprivation Index (RDI) using Norfolk as a case study. The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC) is currently developing a dashboard with the Nuffield Trust to track COVID-19 and the pressures it brings to rural areas. This also means looking at what devices we already use in rural areas – such as mobile phones or google maps – and how these might be utilised in how we share and use data. 

Maps are perhaps one of the most recognised visualisations of how we use geospatial data to understand the environment. But as the Geospatial Strategy reminds us, ‘you can’t use an old map to explore a new world.’ The need for geospatial data and analysis has never been greater – and this is not just about monitoring COVID-19 but in planning for a post-COVID world too. Will the work of the Commission and its Geospatial Strategy reduce fragmentation and deliver for rural places? Watch this space.  …………………………………………………………………………………………………

Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). Her current work includes supporting health commissioners and providers to measure their response to COVID-19 and with future planning; working with 8 farm support groups across England on a Defra funded resilience programme; and helping Local Authorities to measure social value. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older and vulnerable people. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/ https://www.ncrhc.org/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen