HC Deb 22 January 2001 vol 361 cc454-6W
Mr. Win Griffiths

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what areas are designated as urban and rural for determining financial allocations and other departmental purposes; and what changes have taken place in the areas so designated over the last 20 years. [145837]

Ms Beverley Hughes

The Indices of Deprivation 2000 (ID 2000), which were published last August, provide tools to identify the most deprived areas in England which may be used in determining the allocation of funding of regeneration policies. The ID 2000 provide scores and ranks in terms of how deprived they are for all areas in England regardless of whether they are urban or rural. Previous indices were published in 1981, 1994 and 1998.

Changes have occurred to the way the indices have been constructed over the years. This has included more direct ways of measuring deprivation rather than using proxy indicators and the move away from using census data that become quickly out of date. Also methodologies have been reviewed and changed so that they more fairly identify areas regardless of size which suffer from deprivation. Methodologies have also changed to ensure that no, or lack of, deprivation on some indicators is not completely cancelled out by high levels of deprivation on other indicators.

The ID 2000 have identified several deprived areas which previous indices have failed to pick up on. Many districts in the former coalfield areas, old industrial areas and rural areas are now identified as suffering widespread deprivation. They reveal patterns of deprivation for every ward and local authority district in the country. There is no one method of distinguishing which areas should be eligible for funding against those that should not. In order to target resources on the most deprived areas, it is proposed that the ID 2000 are used. These have identified 88 areas which should be eligible for the new Neighbourhood Renewal Fund recently announced by the Government. Table 1 shows the areas and this has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

As part of the former Urban Programme, which was the core of the former Department of the Environment's programme to tackle urban deprivation and ran in the 1980s through to the mid 1990s, 57 Urban Priority Areas were designated. Table 2 shows the areas and again the list has been placed in the Libraries of the House. These areas were targeted for their particular problems mainly in terms of economic and environmental issues but also in terms of social and housing deprivation.

Rural Development Areas, now known as Rural Priority Areas, were first designated in 1984. A comprehensive review was carried out by the Rural Development Commission before these areas were designated in 1994 but details of the previous areas are not held centrally. With minor exceptions, all Regional Development Agency rural development programme funding is spent in these areas. Those local authority districts containing wards which fall within Rural Priority Areas are at table 3 and has been placed in the Libraries of the House.

Certain areas have also been designated as being rural for the purposes of the village shop rate relief scheme. The number of designated areas runs into several thousands. These areas can be found in the following Statutory Instruments: SI 1997 No. 620—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the West Midlands) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 621—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the South West) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 622—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the North West and Merseyside) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 623—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the East) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 624—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the North East) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 625—The Housing (Right to Acquire or Enfranchise) (Designated Rural Areas in the South East) Order 1997. SI 1997 No. 2792—The Non-Domestic Rating (Rural Settlements) (England) Order 1997. SI 1998 No. 393—The Non-Domestic Rating (Rural Settlements) (England) Order 1998. SI 1998 No. 2836—The Non-Domestic Rating (Rural Settlements) (England) (No. 2) Order 1998. SI 1999 No. 3158—The Non-Domestic Rating (Rural Settlements) (England) Order 1999.

In addition, Standard Spending Assessments (SSAs), which are the Government's method for allocating Revenue Support Grant, currently use three measures of population density and two of population sparsity based on the 1991 Census. These measures calculate density and levels of sparsity for all local authorities. No dividing line is set to indicate which authorities are rural and which urban, all authorities have a degree of both sparsity and density. The use of these indicators within the SSA formulae is complex and has changed several times since the inception of SSAs for financial year 1990–91. Details of their use can be found in the Local Government Finance Report for each year.