The Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE)

This is the new mechanism for delivering money allocated to England from the European Fund for Rural Development and Defra from 2007 until 2013.

There is a national budget of £3.9bn, of which approximately £22.5m is allocated to the agri-environment and other land management schemes (Axis 2) in North East England. These schemes are being managed by Natural England and the Forestry Commission.

Around £6.6m each year is allocated to One NorthEast to deliver the socio-economic elements of the programme (axis 1 and 3) in the region. This money is being targeted at making agriculture and forestry more competitive and sustainable, and to enhance opportunity in rural areas.

At least 25% of One NorthEast’s total RDPE programme spend (at least £1.5m per year) will use the New Leader approach – a great opportunity for community-led development.

For more information on LEADER, click here.

The North East Implementation Plan (NEIP) provides the overall strategy for the North East programme. There are five priority themes:

• Sustainable farming and forestry
• Micro-enterprise development
• Sustainable communities
• Bioenergy
• Tourism and recreation 

You can keep up with all the latest information on RDPE by visiting www.rdpenortheast.co.uk  This website has been developed by One NorthEast, in collaboration with Natural England and the Forestry Commission, and has information on all aspects of the programme.

We also produce regular newsletters on RDPE. You can access these through the downloads at the bottom of this page.

We are continuing to offer customers a facility for informal discussion about investment ideas along with signposting to other sources of funding and advice available in the North East.

A simple expression of interest form has been produced to help with this process. If you would like to receive a form, please contact our enquiries co-ordinator Michael Patterson on 0191 2296872 or email michael.patterson@onenortheast.co.uk.

More details about the development of the new programme are available on our Question and Answer page.

ERDP Legacy Schemes

The ERDP Project Based Schemes are now closed to new applications. The schemes, originally delivered by the Rural Development Service (RDS), included the Rural Enterprise Scheme, the Processing and Marketing Grant, the Vocational Training Scheme and the Energy Crops (SRC) Producer Group Scheme.

One NorthEast now manages their delivery, and is committed to all existing agreements.

For any enquiries regarding the above schemes please contact Tuppy Kearse on 0191 2296541, or email tuppy.kearse@onenortheast.co.uk 

Supporting Documents and Downloads

BLNE - Operations Development Programme [pdf] (15 KB)

RDPE Update - December 2007 [pdf] (42 KB)

RDPE Update - November 2007 [pdf] (58 KB)

RDPE Update - July 2007 [pdf] (45 KB)

RDPE Update - May 2007 [pdf] (55 KB)

RDPE Update - March 2007 [pdf] (72 KB)

RDPE Update - December 2006 [pdf] (63 KB)

RDPE Update - Oct 2006 [pdf] (64 KB)