Following questions to the Welsh Government regarding EU Rural Development Plan (RDP) spending, the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd confirmed that at the end of 2022, the total spend was £680 million. The total value of the programme is £842 million therefore approximately £162 million remains unspent.
Under EU rules Wales must have committed its spending by the end of 2020 and has until the end of 2023 to use such funding otherwise it will be returned to the EU.
The minister stated that the programme is over-committed, and expects projects to deliver against their agreed objectives in line with RDP 2014-2020 N+3 rule.
The FUW’s concerns regarding the administration and monitoring of the 2014-2020 Wales RDP have been well publicised, including in terms of the underspend from 2020 onwards that led to Wales’ CAP replacement funding being reduced by circa £250 million by the UK Government.
However, the FUW is also concerned that, as Wales approaches the end of the period during which 2014-2020 RDP funding must be spent, the Welsh Government has progressed extremely slowly in terms of developing a comprehensive replacement RDP, and therefore has what at best a rudimentary plan in place - while engagement with key stakeholders in relation to the development of such a replacement has also been minimal.
While the FUW appreciates that certain announcements have been made that are directly related to rural development, there is significant concern that a piecemeal approach has developed/will develop, with schemes and initiatives being announced following development internally by the Welsh Government, with minimal/negligible input by external stakeholders and experts and no overarching evidence-based comprehensive programme.
Naturally, the apparent lack of scrutiny processes (compared with the EU RDP) in terms of both putting together such schemes and monitoring their progress is a concern, and in this context it would appear that the Welsh Government is moving towards/has moved to the type of ‘more relaxed’ design, assessment and administrative processes now in place under the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity/Levelling Up type funding models - which have
quite rightly attracted criticism, including from the Welsh Government, for their scatter-gun approach.
Moreover, the FUW is concerned that the absence of a comprehensive domestic RDP increasingly places Wales at risk of being denied funding by the UK Government, on the grounds that they should not replace European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) funding without seeing a clear plan and evidence for how the Welsh Government intends to spend such funding and how it will benefit Wales.