Residents and businesses are being encouraged to have their say on plans to boost Staffordshire's rural economy.

Staffordshire County Council's rural economic strategy includes supporting the regeneration of five "rural hub towns" – Cheadle, Leek, Rugeley, Stone and Uttoxeter – as well as stimulating enterprise and innovation across the area.

On Wednesday (April 20) members of the county council's cabinet approved a draft version of the strategy to go out to public consultation.

Deputy leader Philip White said: "Almost 80% of Staffordshire is classified as being rural. But interestingly around 60% of our economy is also based in those rural areas – it is an enormous driver in our economy and our success as a place.

"When we came to review our economic strategy on the back of our very successful Staffordshire Means Back to Business programme which took us through the pandemic years, in developing our overall strategy for the economy of Staffordshire we recognised that it was really important that we developed a complimentary strategy which addressed the particular needs of our rural areas.

"It focuses on the same overarching themes around regenerating our High Streets, encouraging a more highly-skilled and highly-paid workforce, encouraging more start-ups and step-ups and putting us in a position to bid more successfully for funding, whether that's private sector investment or funding from Government.

"This piece of work has been going on for some time and is at the stage now where we're ready to take it out to consultation. Last month Cabinet agreed to take our overall economic strategy out to consultation and what we want to be able to do is put these two strategies side by side for people to consider and comment upon so we have their view on the fit between the overall and rural economic strategy.

"We have worked closely with businesses and other organisations that represent rural areas. We have had expert advice from an organisation who are market leaders in this area and we have built a strong evidence base, which has led us to identify five priorities that specifically relate to rural economic development."

The priorities include recovering and growing the visitor economy by supporting tourism businesses and high quality accommodation, supporting sustainable intensification in agriculture and improving rural digital connectivity and access to opportunities through better infrastructure, along with low-carbon transport.

Councillor White said: "The rural economy is very interesting because although it has enormous strength in traditional land-based areas, particularly agriculture, forestry and tourism, the largest sector of our rural economy is manufacturing. The service sector is ever-growing and I think that's one of those interesting themes that we see with the increasing ability to work from home and run businesses from areas where possibly that wasn't feasible in the past.

"Staffordshire in particular has a lot of smaller farm holdings so intensification may look at how those are viable in the modern era. But it's also about diversification, carbon reduction and succession within those businesses and making sure there are the skilled individuals there who can take on those land-based businesses.

"Visitor economy is a huge strength in Staffordshire, an area that is recovering from the pandemic and an area where we think there is considerable further growth that can be achieved, particularly in terms of people to come and stay in Staffordshire and enjoy those rural areas for a little bit longer. Rural hub towns are something that central Government have been putting quite a focus on in terms of identifying those areas that people use in rural locations for services and coming together to socialise.

"In our area we have identified five of those – Leek, Cheadle, Stone, Uttoxeter and Rugeley. We want to focus on unlocking investment opportunities in those areas."