West Dorset MP Chris Loder has urged the Government to set up a rural task force in West Dorset to ‘turbocharge the rural economy’ in West Dorset and rural areas across the UK.
At a ‘levelling up rural Britain debate’ on Wednesday 9th November, Mr Loder criticised the bureaucracy of agencies such as the Environment Agency (EA) and the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) for stifling rural productivity.
Mr Loder stated that approximately 1200 businesses in West Dorset closed during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and that the unnecessary bureaucracy imposed by organisations such at the EA or the RPA were “constraining our ability to make real economic progress and contribute to the wider economic growth of this country”.
The West Dorset MP has been campaigning for greater Government support to “turbo-charge the rural economy” and has in recent months welcomed Government changes to business laws such as the Public Sector Procurements Bill following Mr Loder’s summit in Dorchester with the Government’s Efficiency Minister in July this year. Mr Loder hopes such changes will enable small West Dorset businesses to tap into a wealth of opportunity within the public sector procurements system by the scrapping of red tape left over from European Union procurement laws.
