§ Miss McIntoshTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the application procedures for rural development funds. [129637]
§ Alun MichaelRural development funds are made available through grant schemes under the England Rural Development Programme, which was launched in October 2000. Application procedures have been kept under continual review, and changes made to benefit applicants and improve administrative efficiency.
Significant further improvements are also in development. In the short term, a fast-track appraisal process was piloted recently for applications seeking less than £15,000 under the Rural Enterprise Scheme. The indications are that such an approach can substantially reduce the time taken to confirm the decision over an award of grant and we hope to introduce new arrangements generally, over the coming months. For the longer term, we are engaged in a major programme to improve ERDP delivery radically, and support the delivery of new agri-environment schemes. These benefits, facilitated in part by a completely new IT system, will begin to come on stream in early 2005.