SOME of the 70 invited delegates at a rural recovery seminar at Durham county hall last week felt it said nothing new.

Dr John Bridge, chairman of the regional development agency OneNortheast, spoke about a regional approach to rural recovery. He felt the exposure the countryside had received over the last eight or nine months had provided a great platform for developing a robust rural policy to enable programmes to be put in place rapidly.

Up to £5m could be made available to support non-farming businesses across the region and to make a push on the tourism side, with £200,000 support for that over the winter months.

He referred to a ten-point rural action plan, drawn up in partnership with other relevant agencies. A greater realisation had emerged of the importance of the rural economy to the North-East as a whole, with the good news that it was now "on the radar screen".

But his smooth words buttered no parsnips for Teesdale district councillor Richard Betton, who farms in upper Teesdale and is vice- chairman of the NFU less favoured areas committee.

He was concerned that the action plan was nothing more than a strategy document, and was not sure whether "rural proofing" was about moonshine or was moonshine.

There was nothing in it about maximum working weeks or minimum wages. It ignored the findings of the hill task force report and was published before Lord Haskins and Sir Don Currie were due to present their reports to government. "These things need to be fed in before we can move forward," he said.

Dr Bridge, reminded Coun Betton that the plan was still at the consultation stage and went on to speak about tourism, which was the key to diversification and had to be treated as a mainline contributor to the rural economy, not as a pastime. This, as reported in last week's D&S Times, led to his comments being challenged by Teesdale District Council chief executive, Mr Charles Anderson, who said tourism jobs in Teesdale tended to be seasonal and low paid.

Dr Bridge also outlined the need for ICT delivery in the countryside, and to develop market towns as viable centres.

He urged everyone to read carefully a forthcoming Green Paper on planning because, if they got it wrong, a lot of things would be much more difficult to achieve.

He wanted everyone signed up to, and good local delivery of, the action plan. If they got good quality analysis and proposals, OneNortheast was prepared to allocate a significant proportion of its total spend to those projects to create a strong, diversified rural economy providing good quality jobs.