News & Business


Police need more funds to fight rural crime


The Home Offi ce has been urged to remember rural communities when allocat- ing funding to police forces to fi ght crime and anti-social be- haviour.


Fenland farmers unite for


food and wildlife • Farming and environment together • Pooling knowledge and expertise • Paving the way for future schemes


Farmers from the Cambridgesh- ire and Norfolk fens have formed a nature-friendly farming zone to highlight management practices that benefi t wildlife and the en- vironment.


Members share the conviction that farming can be environmen- tally sustainable as well as pro- ductive and profi table. They hope to increase the impact of their in- dividual wildlife friendly farming operations by pooling their col- lective knowledge and expertise. The group also hopes to en- gage with local people and the broader farming community at events like Linking Environ- ment And Farming’s (LEAF) Open Farm Sunday in June, to raise awareness of the relation- ship between farming and nature, and the benefi ts of adopting wild- life-friendly practices. Farmer Tom Clarke took over his family’s business in 2009. He said: “Many farmers are already doing a lot for the environment,


6 ANGLIA FARMER • JULY 2018


but to really make a difference across a landscape as dominat- ed by farming as the fens is, we need to work together.” He added: “The typical stere- otype of the fens and farming in the fens is of fl at, ‘boring’ fi elds intensively farmed with no room for nature. It is up to us to show them otherwise and demonstrate that farming can go hand in hand with conserving nature.”


Habitat creation


The RSPB has supported the farmers in the formation of the group, as well as advising on the creation and management of wildlife habitat and helping farmers enter into agri-environ- ment agreements, such as the current Countryside Steward-


“


Farming can go hand in hand with conserving nature.


ship scheme. The RSPB’s Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire is among those that have created and managed the right kind of farmland habitat on benefi ts wildlife while produc- ing food, explained RSPB farm- land conservation advisor An- drew Holland.


They were helping to improve habitats and reverse a decline in wildlife. “Farmers like those in the Ely Nature Friendly Farming Zone are championing the kind of sustainable farming that is need- ed to restore the wildlife we’ve al- ready lost.”


Looking to the government’s forthcoming Agriculture Bill, Mr Holland added: “With the help of well-designed and implemented policies to promote nature friend- ly farming, other farmers too will start doing more for nature on their farms.” It was fantastic that farm- ers in one of the most produc- tive and profi table agricultural landscapes in the country were committed to farming sustain- ably, said Mr Holland. “If space can be made to include nature in farmland in the fens, it can – and should – be done everywhere.”


The plea to Home Offi ce Minister Nick Hurd was made by National Rural Crime Net- work chair Julia Mulligan, who said the key challenges faced by rural police forces are not properly refl ected in the way funding decisions are made. Some 20,000 people recent- ly completed the network’s sec- ond national rural crime sur- vey, which aims to provide the evidence to ensure the voices and experiences of farmers and rural communities affect- ed by crime are heard by gov- ernment ministers. Ms Mulligan said: “Minis- ters are in no doubt of my view on this issue. The funding for- mula for police forces does not recognise the costs of po- licing rural areas. This needs to change.


“Providing services across


large, sparsely populated ge- ographical areas is expensive and, as resources come under even greater pressure, this is becoming even more challeng- ing.”


The recommendations from the last National Rural Crime Survey, carried out in 2015, had fair funding as one of the priorities for change. Yet, three years on, Ms Mulligan said the challenge for rural police forc- es remains. She added: “I hope the min- ister recognises that this sit- uation cannot go on and that rural communities deserve better.” Findings from the net-


work’s second survey are due to be released in late July. They will be presented to ministers as evidence of the challenge of policing rural communi- ties, the key issues faced in the countryside and recommenda- tions to address them.


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