Supporting the Rural Lens work with the NSET

Two of Scotland’s Cabinet Secretaries (Mairi Gougeon MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands and Kate Forbes MSP (Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy) recently agreed to undertake ‘light-touch’ rural proofing of the projects associated with the National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET). Long-term, the aim is to establish rural proofing more widely across all policy domains.

As a result of this high level commitment, the introduction of the Rural Lens has become a priority work stream across the SG’s Rural and Island Futures Division, and policy officials in the SG’s Rural Economy team have been working on devising ‘Rural Lens’ guidance for policy-makers across different departments to support them as they undertake rural proofing.

However, their in-house capacity is limited. This project will establish an Advisory Group of academics (drawing in other stakeholders, such as Scottish Rural Action, as appropriate), who have worked on rural policy issues, including rural proofing, in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK and internationally, to bring valuable additional expertise, knowledge, capability and experience from the SRP and beyond to take forward this work and establish a meaningful and impactful approach to rural proofing across SG.


This project has been co-developed with policy officials in the SG’s Rural and Islands Futures Division, namely Timothy Orr and Paul Rhodes from the Rural Economy policy team and Elaine McGregor and Hannah Downey, from the Rural Communities policy team.