Inspiring and enabling local communities: An integrated delivery model for localism and the environment

The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) recently commissioned the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) to evaluate its Integrated Local Delivery (ILD) model, which has been nearly eight years in development.

The project had two key aims:

• Determine and outline the nature of the delivery model in order to identify the potential for it to be replicated in other areas and by other individuals;
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the approach within a case study by interviewing a cross section of the local community, land managers and government agency staff.

There are 8 key themes to the ILD model that run through all the examples where the approach has been used, including the Walmore case study evaluated the report. The approach:

• looks to work within the lowest appropriate National and European administrative structure (i.e. parish or ward, town, county, district, region, country);
• clarifies which statutory and non-statutory partners have an interest in the area so that they can be involved and their strategic aims and objectives identified and delivered within that administrative area; 
• seeks to deliver a wide range of strategic objectives within the defined area in order to maximise the wider landscape scale potential effective use of public funds;
• seeks to strongly support and value the role and knowledge of the farming community;
• promotes the use of facilitation through an independent third party to develop a local management group that acts as the collective discussion forum for the area, with clear lines of communication to those public agencies with legal responsibilities;
• incorporates the Parish Council (or other local government framework) into the communication structure of the local management group to ensure continuity beyond project timescales;
• provides a forum for all those within the defined area to take action and offer knowledge and resource to achieve multi objective delivery with an inclusive list of partners;
• identifies funding opportunities, particularly through the Rural Development Programme for England, (RDPE) and match funding through joined up partnership working.

The ILD model outlines a 6 step process for facilitators to act as a guide for the model.

The CRRI concluded that the ILD model is a viable and valuable process, which appears to have strong synergies with other similar approaches. The integrated and participatory nature of the approach ultimately leads to more sustainable and enduring decisions.

View the full CCRI report.

See how the Land Management team in Gloucestershire have used this approach in their work.

View the project on our database.

This research was funded by Natural England.

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