Somerset Rural Renaissance

Rural Regeneration - Supporting the Economy of Somerset

Main Rural Renaissance Programme 2005-9
In deciding how to allocate the investment funds to projects, the Somerset Rural Renaissance Partnership identified the following key needs and priorities:

Addressing the low productivity, wage levels and skills base of the county’s rural economy;

Diversifying and adding dynamism to the county’s rural economy and broadening the employment base of vulnerable employment centres;

Improving the limited economic infrastructure of rural Somerset and overcoming remoteness of rural businesses from training and business support;

Reversing the economic and physical decline of some key rural centres in the county and the serious decline in rural services;

Tackling barriers to employment, skills gaps and exclusion experienced by particular groups of the population.

All funds for 2008-9 have been allocated and the programme is now closed to new applications.

Read about the latest projects to be awarded funding

The Somerset Market Towns Regeneration Fund is now open for projects that benefit market towns.

Somerset’s Strategic Themes

The funding investments were allocated to projects fitting four strategic themes reflected from the County’s Economic Strategy:

To provide enterprise development & support

To help overcome exclusion, skills gap and barriers

To develop sustainable tourism & local identity

To develop the capacity of organisations and businesses to deliver a rural renaissance in Somerset

Outputs

The RR Partnership is tasked with achieving a range of outputs for the investments:

Creating/Safeguarding jobs & supporting people to get a job

Creating new or supporting existing businesses

Assisting in skills development

Main Programme Support Projects were required to demonstrate that they had researched the needs to justify the investment, and would be able to provide at least 50% match funding as well as showing that the project would be sustainable beyond RR funding.

For the latest summary of Rural Renaissance projects please visit: Main programme projects summary 2005-8 , Projects Summary 2008-9 , Workspace projects summary, Access to Services Projects Summary. For details of projects funded under the main programme visit the Rural Renaissance Projects page.

Rural Renaissance Programme
The list below shows just some of the business and communities that the RR Programme has helped and benefited through its different strategies.

Strategic Theme 1
Provide enterprise development and support

Strategic Theme 2
Help overcome exclusion, skills gap and barriers

Strategic Theme 3
Develop sustainable tourism and local identity

Strategic Theme 4
Develop the capacity of Somerset to deliver a Rural Renaissance

Market Towns - Building the Network

2008/9 projects