Rural Strategy 2004 Fact Sheet: Integrated Agency in England
What is the Integrated Agency?
- The Integrated Agency will be a new large, powerful and independent statutory public body for protecting and enhancing the natural environment, biodiversity and landscape while realising the benefits for people, through improving access and recreation.
- It will bring together English Nature, parts of the Countryside Agency and most of the Rural Development Service. It will have a new name, to be decided by those who will work within it, as part of developing the vision for the new organisation.
- It will have around 2,300 staff, in national, regional and local teams, in due course in co-located offices, with common pay and terms and conditions of service.
Why is it needed?
- There is no single body with the twin, mutually reinforcing objectives of conserving and enhancing the resource of nature together with realising the social and economic benefits for people of so doing.
- There is no single body responsible for natural resource management across our seas, rivers and all of our green spaces, urban and rural.
What will it do?
- The Integrated Agency will take an integrated approach to enhancing the natural environment and our
enjoyment of it across rural, urban, marine and coastal England. It will:
- have a strong voice at regional and local level, so that the conservation aspects of decisions are addressed at the very earliest point in decision-making;
- move away from a ‘silo’ approach to land management across England, for example, tackling problems according to natural rather than administrative or special site boundaries;
- inform policy-making at national, EU and international level;
- undertake or commission research to develop a solid evidence base, well grounded in science and practical delivery experience; and
- work with a range of partners, at national, regional and local level – including the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission, English Heritage, the Regional Development Agencies and local authorities, to meet these objectives.
What will be better?
- A more integrated approach will achieve improvements for the environment, land managers and the general
public by:
- tackling the drivers of environmental protection and increasing diversity at landscape and river catchment scale, on a wide-area basis, rather than narrowly in relation to particular sites;
- providing a better framework for increasing public use, understanding and enjoyment of our natural heritage in a sustainable way;
- promoting a better understanding of environmental need by national, regional and local partners that feeds into their decisions;
- more effective, simpler relationships with land managers and others;
- strong, expert challenge to tell Government what works; and
- enabling efficiency savings which can be reinvested in the front line.
How and when?
The changes will be phased as follows:
- 2004/05
- Constituent parts of the new agency come together as a confederation of partners, working jointly to achieve a common overarching vision and purpose – but with each organisation responsible for its own statutory functions.
- A draft bill is published in spring 2005, to stimulate discussion about what is needed to underpin natural resource protection.
- 2005/06
- Pilot projects and studies develop new ways of working. Begin process of co-locating staff, to deliver business and efficiency benefits. Decisions taken on the
long-term location of the Integrated Agency at national, regional and local team level. - 2006/07
- Integrated Agency is formally established in law (subject to parliamentary timetable).
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Page last modified:
19 May, 2005
Page published: 21 July, 2004