Wire up countryside, says CPRE

18 February 2000

Wire up countryside, says CPRE

By Alistair Driver

THE biggest hurdle facing the governments radical proposals to close most of its regional offices and communicate with farmers via the internet (News, Feb 4 and 11) could be overcome if a plan to provide an IT kiosk in every village in England within the next three years is accepted.

The proposal to "wire up the countryside" forms part of the Council for the Protection of Rural Englands submission to the government on how it should allocate future resources to the countryside.

As part of a proposed £800m package, CPRE recommends the government spends £43m in each of the next three years to fit all of Englands 16,000 villages with IT kiosks, costing £80,000 each.

"The kiosks would help enable greater IT use among farmers," said CPRE assistant director Tony Burton.

Increasing IT access is a central plank of internal proposals to "modernise" MAFF and make it "more appropriate to the needs of farmers today".

The proposals to reduce the number of MAFF regional offices and cut staff by 1750 jobs, were described as "barmy" this week by Conservative MP Peter Luff. The former chairman of the Commons Agriculture Select Committee said: "The proposals work on the basis that farmers can all use the Internet to get advice, but how many have access to the net?"

He said the plans show the government is more interested in realising the capital of regional service centre sites than in providing services.