Rural challenges

The National Housing Federation’s (NHF) Rural Housing Week highlights the alarming lack of affordable homes in the English countryside, where young people are priced out and there is an intensifying trend of villages becoming ‘pensioner pockets’.

Younger generations who aspire to ‘grow up and grow old’ in villages and market towns, the NHF concludes, and households wishing to move to the countryside, are excluded by rapidly rising house prices and a lack of social housing alternatives.

New research by the Matrix Housing Partnership and the Human City Institute (HCI) identifies three pressing needs in rural communities: like the NHF, affordable housing tops the list. But of primary importance too are the need for more sustainable local economies and better access to community-based services to support residents as local councils retrench under the pressures of austerity.

Despite these concerns, the Matrix-HCI research, called ‘Valuing the Village’, demonstrates that there is much to build on in rural communities. Social housing tenants in the research’s two case study villages of Bredon in Worcestershire and Tutbury in Staffordshire, clearly appreciate the benefits of rural life.

The research paints a picture of a vibrant countryside brimming with potential, where the key assets are people as well as place. Village life is valued greatly by residents. And there is evidence of long-established family networks and resident-focused community facilities, many of which are provided by social landlords.

However, the rural economy is held back by a lack of affordable housing, low wages, inferior internet access rates when compared with urban areas, and transport links in need of an upgrade to increase the geographical mobility of rural workers.

To confront these challenges, social landlords need to expand their service repertoire to develop local enterprises and support the rural social economy, and create apprenticeships or training opportunities at a higher rate. Direct and indirect investment by housing associations, which the research calculates as vital to rural communities, helps generate considerable social value too.

The research equally advocates that social landlords have a key role to play in maintaining successful rural communities and should act as community hubs, providing a range of hyper-local services.

Social landlord initiatives that tackle fuel poverty, reduce worklessness, offer welfare advice, provide affordable credit and support community transport are highly rated by residents and offer potential growth areas for service delivery.

Social landlords building homes for existing country dwellers, and people who want to return to the countryside, or for attracting new people out of cities, will help sustain village viability.

The social landlord role in developing garden cities and supporting community land trusts and cohousing schemes, together with more traditional affordable housing, is crucial to the continuing success of village life.

Social landlords also need to build in technology to improve housing sustainability through low or zero carbon housing, and connect rural people to the global economy by providing fast broadband to stimulate the digital economy while fending off isolation and loneliness of some village dwellers.

Matrix is already addressing these connected issues, although much more needs to be done in the face of local government belt-tightening and pressure on social landlords to reduce costs.

Nicola Inchbald, chair of the Matrix Housing Partnership and the Rooftop Housing Group. This week is Rural Housing Week

The final report will be published at the National Housing Federation conference in September.