Rural Excellence programme

Rural Excellence is a mentoring programme to improve local government in rural areas of England.

It is bringing together politicians and officials working all levels of government, including:

• parish and town councils
• principal local authorities
• regional government
• the Department for Food and Rual Affairs (Defra) at a national level.

Phase one of the programme was completed in 2007 and focused on rural delivery. An evaluation report from this phase, plus a report from the pilot phase of the progarmme, is available below.

Reports from the Rural Excellence pilot, and Phase one of the programme

Phase two ran from 2006 to early 2008 and focused on the strategic housing capacity of rural councils. It was part of the response by central and local government to the Affordable Rural Housing Commission report.

Find out more about Phase two of the programme

More information

Living Working Countryside: The Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing (PDF, 206 pages, 1.92KB) – on the Communities and Local Government website

Rural Excellence programme (PDF, 2 pages, 472KB)

Affordable Rural Housing Commission report (PDF, 104 pages, 1.57 MB) – on the Defra website