Case Officers will enter their scores against each regional priority onto the online database. At an appropriate time before each RPAC assessment round the database will be interrogated for regional priority scores ready for RPAC approval/rejection across the 11 RPAC regions. These will be collated by the central implementation team.
At a national level all of the scored priorities will be sorted into the 5 broad budget categories against which Rural Priorities funding has been allocated. These budget categories are: business development, agri-environment, forestry, rural enterprise and rural communities.
Within each budget category scores will be graphed to obtain a distribution curve in order to plot a 'cut-off' score above which all proposals can be accommodated within the budgetary constraints prevalent at the time.
The scoring distribution and recommended 'cut-off' scores will be reviewed and agreed by the National Proposal Assessment Committee (Include representatives from the RPACs).
RPACs will then be informed of the agreed 'cut-off' score for each of the budgetary categories and the 'buffer' score either side of the 'cut-off' score. RPACs will be encouraged to focus their attention on cases that fall within the 'buffer' range to separate out any similarly scoring cases (see later).
Before each RPAC meeting the pre-approval co-ordinator will collate all the Case Officer assessment and scoring sheets for proposals that fall within the 'buffer' scoring range plus any other cases the RPAC has been asked to consider.
RPACs will review and, if satisfied, formally recommend rejection of all proposals that score below the cut-off and buffer scoring range.
RPACs will further examine and review the scoring of proposals that fall within the buffer scoring range and can use the following hierarchy of supporting information to help them decide whether to approve or reject the cases that fall within this category:
1. Assessment score - If similar cases score differently overall and RPACs have had opportunity to review and agree with Case Officer's assessments then they may be able to use this to reject/approve cases within the buffer range. If they cannot separate cases on overall score alone then
2. Prioritise remaining cases that score 'high' for 'Quality', 'Quantity' and 'National Target' criteria - If this does not separate out remaining similar scoring cases then
3. Prioritise remaining cases using the total number of 'highs' against criteria within the 'fit with regional priority' category. If this does not separate out remaining similar scoring cases then
4. Prioritise remaining cases according to total number 'highs' across all 3 groups of scoring criteria
5. Finally, if after applying the above decision hierarchy there remain cases that cannot be separated the RPAC should use their collective knowledge and understanding of the regional priority to tease out the proposal which best fits with the expected outcome. This may require the RPAC to further clarify and define the nature of the priority. In which case, the discussion should be recorded in order to inform future refinement of regional priorities with the wider RPAC stakeholder group.
Please note that, in response to the recommendations arising from the recent SRDP review ('the Cook Report'), we will shortly be reviewing the scoring process for Rural Priorities applications.
In the meantime, you should be aware that the scoring mechanism will only be part of the assessment process. While scores will always be taken into account, there may be other criteria considered by the RPAC in deciding whether a project should be approved, particularly in relation to projects seeking higher levels of funding. Further information on the additional criteria which may be considered will be published shortly.
The recommendations from each RPAC will be collated after the last RPAC has met for that round and passed to the Cabinet Secretary for his consideration.