Scottish Rural Communities Policy Review: stage 2 - England case study

5. Policy outputs and deliverable outcomes: Evaluation and Monitoring

There is no evaluation and monitoring of the impact of national policies on rural citizens in England, apart from an annual rural proofing report to Parliament. The introduction of UK government policies must routinely be accompanied by an impact assessment. An official review of rural proofing (Cameron 2016) found that only 11% of such Impact Assessments between 2010-2014 had substantive rural proofing and there was little cross-departmental engagement. Cameron recommended a new approach with Cabinet Office oversight to ensure all departments rural proof their policies and programmes, but this has not materialised. An alternative proposal is for a whole-of-government outcomes-based approach in pursuit of an overarching rural strategy (Shucksmith, 2019; House of Lords, 2019).

In May 2025, the UK Government issued a statement confirming its commitment that all policy decision-making should be rural proofed. While there is no specific rural mission (as one of the missions that set out how the UK Government is bringing about change in the country) but rural areas are affected by each of the five missions and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has established a new Rural Taskforce to lead on rural proofing them and assessing how they might affect outcomes in rural areas^[7].

While there has been no formal monitoring and evaluation of the impact of national policies on rural citizens in the UK beyond annual rural proofing reports^[8], nevertheless, there has been evaluation of both ACRE and of the LEADER programmes.

An evaluation of the annual Defra grant to the ACRE network was undertaken by Ecorys consultants in 2023-24 but this has not been published by Defra. It is understood that this adopted a comprehensive mixed-methods approach, employing a Theory of Change framework. This included in-depth case studies with selected Rural Community Councils, diving into the specifics of how funding is used at the local level and the resultant impacts. Sub-contractors at the Countryside and Community Research Institute report that these case studies were vital for testing the grant’s delivery against the established Theory of Change; exploring the outcomes facilitated by Defra’s funding of the ACRE Network, and the enablers and barriers to effective use of the grant against Defra’s programme priorities. It is also understood, from ACRE Board Meeting minutes, that the evaluation conclusions were favourable and supported continuation of this funding.

England’s LEADER programmes were included in the national evaluations of the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE), as well as sometimes at Local Action Group level (see for example, Annibal et al., 2013). Thus, the ex-post evaluation of the Rural Development Programme for England 2007-13 (ADAS et al., 2016) drew on scheme data, a survey of beneficiaries, and stakeholder consultations in a mixed-methods approach which is particularly interesting for its use of a Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach. It found that LEADER was effective and efficient with low deadweight (i.e. high additionality^[9]) and a high Social Return on Investment of 3:1 (i.e. £3 of social value for each £1 spent), reflecting its broad beneficiary base. There is a large European literature on LEADER evaluation methods, drawn on in the report for Scottish Government by Atterton et al. (2020).