THE purpose of this letter is to clarify some of the points made by R. Freshwater on your Letters page on March 2.

The Countryside Agency's involvement in Integrated Rural Development (IRD) in the Forest of Dean started early in 2000, in recognition of the unique combination of economic, social and environmental issues facing the district. The Agency believes that an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty designation would not be the best way to tackle these issues. Instead, as part of the IRD project, we are working with partners to determine a more locally based way of protecting and looking after the Dean's important landscape and heritage. We have a three year timetable to produce this new approach: about the same as the time it would take to decide on an AONB boundary. We hope that the lessons learnt as we develop this new approach can be shared with other parts of the country, that are also looking for a locally tailored way to protect their landscape and heritage.

The Agency works closely with the Forest Regeneration Partnership on a number of specific regeneration projects. We are late arrivals in the Partnership and have a lot to learn, and so far have been concentrating on identifying those areas of work where we can usefully add our expertise. We also work as closely as we can with the people of the Forest. Although our main office is in Bristol, Val Kirby spends a lot of each working week in the Forest. Local newspapers and radio are invaluable ways of contacting ordinary people. For example, every two months we take a whole page in this newspaper, and this is proving an effective way of letting people know about the project.

We are holding a series of community workshop days – a useful and enjoyable way of finding out what is unique about the Forest, straight from local people. Sadly these workshops are postponed because of the foot and mouth outbreak, but we will resume them as soon as we can. We also support the new initiative for Foresters, launched at the Miners' Hall in Cinderford on March 9, and hope that it will provide another way for local people to become actively involved in the IRD project.

The project currently has one full time member of staff, Val Kirby, and one part time, Shelagh Hume. Our salaries are included in the £1 million overall figure that the agency will spend in the Forest from 2000 to 2003. Salary costs are unlikely to exceed £120,000 over the three years, and will not reach the £300,000 suggested by Mr Freshwater. Administrative costs, our travel and subsistence expenses and office support in Bristol are also not included in the £1 million. In addition the project will benefit from funds from other Countryside Agency programmes (for example, our new Vital Villages scheme) and funds that we hope to lever in from other sources (for example, Local Heritage Initiative). The overall budget for the next financial year has just been approved, and over the next two months Val Kirby will work with all our partners to ensure that there are firm commitments to spend the available money. As soon as we are more certain about different aspects of the spending programme, we will use the Review page to explain what is happening.

The Forest Regeneration Partnership has a Management Group that oversees the IRD project locally, and a parallel Countryside Agency Steering group makes sure that the project fits the Agency's national strategy and programmes. We hope that these two groups will meet at least annually, to discuss the programme as a whole.

Our programme of work is summarised in a Draft Project Plan. An early draft was discussed at the first workshop in November. As a result of that workshop and consultations with partners, an altered and expanded plan is now nearly ready. It is not a statutory plan, with a formal consultation period, but we will value any comments that anyone wishes to make. Again, we will use our Review page to let local people know when and where the plan will be available. – Val Kirby and Shelagh Hume, The Countryside Agency, Bridge House, Sion Place, Clifton Down, Bristol.