15 minutes with...Charles Trotman

What does the government's new Devolution Act actually mean for rural Britain?

In this episode of 15 Minutes With, host Jonathan Roberts is joined by Charles Trotman of the CLA (Country Land and Business Association) to break down the UK's landmark devolution legislation — and what it means for farmers, landowners, and rural businesses.

Charles explains how power will flow from Whitehall to new strategic authorities and unitary councils, why the CLA's hard-won inclusion of "rural affairs" as a legal area of competence is a game-changer, and how rural commissioners and economic boards could finally give countryside communities a genuine seat at the table.

They also debate whether devolution is a sign of government weakness, explore how Reform and Green Party gains in local elections could reshape rural policy, and turn the spotlight on Wales — where a new poll reveals deep dissatisfaction with how devolution has been handled so far.

With Welsh elections imminent and a wave of political change on the horizon, this is a pivotal moment for rural Britain. Charles makes the case for why now is exactly the time to get involved — and why CLA membership has never mattered more.

Transcript

15 Minutes With: Rural Devolution & Local Governance

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is Fifteen Minutes With from the Country Land and Business Association. I'm Jonathan Roberts, and in this edition I sit down with the CLA's Charles Trotman to discuss the UK government's devolution agenda. So Charles Trotman, hello. Why don't we start by talking through what the UK government's devolution agenda actually is?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Afternoon, Jonathan. I think the important thing to recognise is that you need to look at the concept. So the concept of devolution essentially is for power from central government to flow down either to a form of regional government or to local government. So through the devolution bill, which has now got royal assent as of yesterday, the government is intending to give more power, more responsibilities to local authorities. And it was doing this in a staggered way. So what it's decided to do is to have a series of priority councils and also to put in place what are strategic authorities. Now, if you look at the model that the government is putting together, it's the strategic authorities that actually have the power. They're the ones who will take the high-level decisions, and many of the existing strategic authorities, such as Manchester, for example, have mayors and they're called mayoral authorities. Underneath that, you have another tier, and that includes unitary authorities or combined county authorities. Now, the idea behind this is that the responsibility to for a unitary authority, for example, is to actually provide public services. It does the day-to-day job that a normal council will do. But it also means that if we look at district councils, for example, they'll be absorbed into those unitary authorities. So what we're trying to do at the CLA is target the strategic authorities because quite honestly, that's where the vast majority of the powers will flow from.

Rural Affairs as an Area of Competence

SPEAKER_01 2:17

And we're going to come back to, I suppose, the conversation about how sensible all this is in a second, but let's just uh stick around with how things are actually going to work. Because we've had a bit of a lobbying win at the very, very end of the lobbying of the devolution bill. It was CLA policy to include rural affairs in the devolution settlement. The government initially didn't want that, but it now will be. What do you think that's going to mean for rural businesses?

Rural Proofing & Local Decision Making

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Well, I think we've seen in the past we've had devolution deals before in certain regions. What we've seen is that urban interests have always been prioritised. Now, I think now that we have rural affairs as what's called an area of competence, that means that the both the strategic authorities and the unitary authorities have to take into account rural affairs. Now, rural affairs itself is a very, very broad range of interests, range of sectors. So it's not just agriculture, it's about rural economic development, it's about the environment, it's about a protect a protection of landscapes and of the countryside. And it also has embedded within it a policy process called rural proofing. Now, we've said to government on many, many occasions that rural proofing, frankly, doesn't work, primarily because it has no legal footing behind it. Now that the government has finally conceded to allow rural affairs to be an area of competence, it means that rural proofing, which essentially holds policies to account that must include or take into account the interests of rural areas, now that we've got that, it means that we have another pressure point in which to influence, in this case, local decision making.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

I confess I've never been a particular fan of rural briefing as a concept because I always felt, and I think this is exactly what happened in Whitehall, they were it would end up being a bit of a checkbox exercise that policy was developed in line with what the government wanted, and then some junior official in some corner of some government building would be given a piece of paper to sign off. The actual impact on rural people would be would be pretty limited. What's to stop the exact same thing happening now just at council level?

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Well, I think now that we've got you know rural affairs now included, that'll also mean that local authorities will need to appoint rural commissioners. So the government's allowed a number of commissioners to be appointed, which will cover the now eight areas of competence. That's important because it means that we have a, you could say, a pinch point or a channel in which to advise and lobby and make sure that our members' voices are actually heard at the at the local level. Now, we were already having conversations with mayors, we're already having conversations with current council leaders. Now, next week's election, elections, of course, in many areas, that's going to change the political dynamic. But it is important, certainly, for us as a trade association, and particularly in our lobbying work, for us to have that that area of competence, because it means we can target our resource into areas and policies which will be of direct benefit to the membership.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

And I suppose it a big part of this comes down to how we define rural affairs. You just talked about the local elections there. If current polling is to be believed, you're going to have a huge increase in the reform vote, lots more reform councillors and probably reform-led councils. And the exact same with the Green Party, albeit probably in more urban areas. Those two parties are going to have a very different attitude towards the concept of rural affairs. Is there any agreed definition of rural affairs that exists in law at the moment? And should there be one?

Defining Rural & Local Authority Engagement

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Well, it doesn't necessarily exist in law, and I think you're right. I think it should do. And I think this is an opportunity of actually setting out what the proper definition of rural is. But it's widely recognized that rural is an area in the country with a population density of less than 10,000. So it could be a market town, it could be a village, or it could be a hamlet. They're generally seen as being rural. Now, the the issue here about local priorities, I think this is key because this is where central government policy necessarily has to link into what a local area actually wants. And one of the big criticisms of the devolution bill, which obviously is now the devolution act, was that it was central government basically saying to local people, you know, the local authorities, this is what we want to do. And there were serious question marks as to the level of engagement and the level of consultation of the of the local uh population. Now I think we now have an opportunity because we've got rural affairs, you know, in the act, I think that gives us the opportunity of actually ensuring proper local engagement. And I think it's it's our responsibility, I think it's our job to ensure that through our members we can fully engage not only with the local population, but make sure that there are no policy vacuums. One of the big concerns I've got, and I have done for a number of years, is that when a local authority takes a decision, there's usually a policy vacuum between the local authority and the local business. And the local business isn't consulted whatsoever. Now, I think we have an opportunity through being able to put in place structures such as I think we've recommended rural economic boards or rural economic committees to actually ensure that our voice as representatives of you know rural businesses can actually be heard. And it gives local authorities an opportunity to actually begin to understand what rural is. And that's one of the biggest bugbears I've got. You know, many members have said to me, well, clearly it's the case that policymakers, whether it be central government or local government, actually don't understand what rural is, and as importantly, they don't understand how a rural business actually operates, whether it be agricultural or tourism or whatever. So I think this is probably the first real opportunity that we've had of making a real difference in the decision-making apparatus.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

So I've got a bit of a theory, Charles, and I'm looking to you to tell me why I'm wrong in this theory. It's a view that I've always had long before I was working for the CLA, and that's in a sense, devolution is a bit of a sign of defeat. That it's Whitehall saying, you know, we don't know how to do this, we can't make a success of governing these issues, we're just going to get the councils to do this work instead. And all it does is create more politicians, which nobody wants, and it passes the book to local government when local government often doesn't have the resources or the knowledge to do it well. So, how are those local authorities, be they mayor or be they councils, going to overcome that knowledge gap and the resource gap?

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Well, that's where we come in. In terms of knowledge, the CLA as a trade association, along with other trade associations, need to be able to not only engage but advise. And I think this is where these committees or boards, rural boards, will become so important. They've got to be able to advise the rural commissioner. It's also, however, an opportunity of targeting resource. We've always believed as an organization that local problems need to be fixed by local solutions. We don't believe that central government has a role to play in a lot of public life, a lot of public decisions which are made. That should be the responsibility of local authorities. We as an organization have a responsibility not only to ourselves but also to our members to ensure that not only do local authorities target resource properly, they target it in the right areas, but they are fully advised as well. So I think I think we need to look at the positive of this. You know, in the past I'd agree with you, devolution has been seen to be a weakness rather than strength. I think this is an opportunity for us to make devolution work and make it work far better than it has done previously.

Wales: Devolution's Mixed Record

SPEAKER_01 11:09

It's an opportunity, of course, you quite rightly say that we have to take advantage of at the CLA. But we've got to also encourage our members to do exactly the same thing because it's all well and good us in a CLA office doing that lobbying work, which our members quite rightly expect us to be doing, and that hopefully we do rather well. There's nothing like that proper engagement from the actual business owner because there it's not just about the difference between, say, an urban business and a rural business. There are so many different types of rural business, and they are in their own way, they've all got different challenges to meet. And there's sometimes a bit of a habit in government, probably because of a resource issue on their part, where they kind of pigeonhole businesses a little bit. They end up with a one-size-fits-all approach to policy making when we've got to have that kind of flexibility to be able to respond to different business needs in different, not just parts of the country, but different parts of their own community. I just want to finish up though by talking a little bit about Wales, because there's a huge election coming up next week as we're recording. You may at home be listening and you already know the result in a week's time. But we ran an opinion poll in rural Wales a few weeks ago where 55% of people living in the countryside in Wales said the devolution had made things worse. Only around 20% thought that devolution had made things better. What do you think, if anything, has gone wrong in the Senate, and what should the next government be seeking to fix?

Looking Ahead: Wales Elections & CLA Membership

SPEAKER_00 12:53

I think the key element here is actual collaboration, consultation, and engagement. Welsh government has not engaged with the local people. It's created a great deal of resentment through its policies. So, for example, with a 180-day rule in tourism, along with the 20 mile-an-hour speed limit, that really did not go down well. So its policy decisions have been, I would suggest, incorrect. It hasn't taken into account the actual needs of local populations, and it really has not recognized the importance of the countryside and rural areas. And because of that, it's taken the decisions which are clearly blinkered and urban-focused. And in a sense, that was always going to happen. I think with the elections next week and the different type of voting patterns that we're that we're seeing, we're going to see a major shift. We're going to see essentially the political structures fragmenting quite significantly. And I think Wales will be a classic example of that. Again, it will give us an opportunity of basically turning around to the Welsh government, the new Welsh government, and say, okay, you've got it wrong in the past. This is your opportunity now of fixing the problems you actually created. You work with us, we'll find you the solutions.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

This is a particularly good time to say to landowners and farmers and rural businesses in Wales. If you're not a member of the CLA, you should be, because this is a big time, a big opportunity for us. I know that the team at CLA Comer have been working flat out ahead of the election. We know they're going to be again afterwards. So get involved, join the CLA, whether you're in Wales or England for that matter, and in one way or another, we'll be able to really make a good fist of this and find a new way of influencing, finding a new way for us all to be running our businesses a little bit better, a little bit more easily, without government being in the way all the time. Uh Charles Trotman, thank you for joining. Thank you, it's been a pleasure. That was fifteen minutes with. Don't forget to subscribe.