At Rural Community Housing, we believe that strong communities rely on a mix of people coming together to support one another in life, education and business. Our aim is to make countryside living possible for those who are able to contribute toward local communities but are currently unable to afford to live there. 

With so many of the younger generation being forced to leave rural communities, family networks and important social infrastructure have suffered. Rural areas are becoming less sustainable and increasingly socially polarised, with local services such as schools and shops becoming increasingly difficult to maintain without a critical mass to use them. 

Rural Community Housing provides much-needed affordable housing to people essential to the local community, economy and environment. Historically, young persons, downsizers, keyworkers and other lowpaid workers have been overlooked when it comes to local housing in rural areas.

We believe it is crucial to cater for these groups of people in order to maintain sustainable communities that are affordable and will continue to be affordable for generations to come.

There is an acute shortage of affordable housing in rural areas of all regions of England. At both a local and regional level, the interpretation of sustainable development within the planning system has often worked against the interests of smaller rural communities. There has been an assumption that, because small rural communities have already lost some of their services, they are intrinsically unsustainable and are therefore not suitable for affordable housing. This restriction on supply, together with the limited availability of suitable sites for development and the pressure from people wanting to move to the countryside have all contributed to house prices which have risen faster, and to higher levels, in rural areas than in the towns.

The shortage of affordable housing is the less visible aspect of a countryside where the wider economy is often thriving and where many people aspire to live. However, success for some rural areas has come at a price for those living on local wages that have been priced out of the property market and for whom there is little available rented housing. Prospective newly-forming households (aged between 16 and 35) in rural areas cannot afford to set up home in rural wards where they currently live. In the East of England these emerging households would have to travel considerable distances, usually into urban areas, before finding locations where housing is affordable for them.

Rural settlements may remain viable in terms of being affluent and well maintained, but they will lack the social mix to make them function as communities where people of different backgrounds share a common identity.

This imbalance will also have implications for society as a whole. If more of those on lower incomes have to move out of the countryside to the cities it will further increase the polarisation between town and country.

We at Rural Community Housing aim to provide much needed affordable housing and we hope our action will make it possible to tackle what we are convinced is one of the biggest problems facing rural England. The decisions we take now, or fail to take, will shape the future of pastoral England.

Decision makers have tended to take a snapshot of communities, making judgements at a single point in time, rather than looking at how all communities might be made more sustainable in the longer term. Similarly, they have often looked at the housing needs of communities in isolation, without considering how settlements relate to each other for housing, employment and other services. At a local level too, the way sustainable development has been interpreted has often worked against the interests of smaller rural communities.

The emphasis has been on conserving the landscape at the expense of the social and economic needs of the communities which live in them. Further, decision makers have often been concerned about the effect that building additional housing in rural areas would have on increasing car use. New development could lead to this if occupied by those who commute long distances to work. But there is another side: the lack of affordable development for those who work in the countryside has led to increased car use as low income families are forced to move to urban areas and commute back to their jobs.

We have repeatedly heard how the lack of affordable housing is undermining community life. People, particularly young couples, are having to move away from their parents and friends. Both family networks and important social infrastructure suffer as a result. One generation is less able to support another if they are too far away to share childcare responsibilities or shop for elderly relatives. This lack of demand means that maintaining local services such as schools and shops becomes increasingly more difficult.

There are potential problems for an increasingly ageing population if present trends continue.  Not only will pensioners become more isolated as younger people move elsewhere, but they will as a result become more reliant on the kind of support services which are often provided by lower paid workers who will themselves find it increasingly difficult to afford to live in rural areas.

More generally, our concern is the inability of people essential to the local community, economy and environment to find local housing. They are not just the key workers covered by the Government’s definition but private and voluntary sector employees, including those working on the land, maintaining the landscape and providing vital services such as bus drivers and care assistants. Moreover, the lack of housing is stifling rural enterprise: employers find it difficult to find workers because they cannot afford to live locally.

We do not think it is fair that income should be the main determinant of whether people can live in the countryside. If it continues to be, the social and age mix of both rural and urban communities will become increasingly imbalanced.

Villages will increasingly become the preserve of those who are better off, who travel long distances to well paid jobs; not places with a mix of people who live, work, educate their children and use local services together.

Rural Community Housing can help to restore this balance by providing affordable homes in rural areas.

Rural Community Housing operates a waiting list for their homes. This is a separate list from the Council and people who are waiting to be housed by the Council are welcome and encouraged to also register with us.  There is a difference between urban and rural living and this must be recognised to create an holistically sustainable community.

In allocating an affordable home, there must be a fair and equitable procedure, but if the system is fettered by being made to primarily and overridingly consider the personal housing needs of the applicant, it is all too easy to house people in the wrong place both for them and for the community in which they live.

Rural Community Housing’s policy places the needs of the community before the personal housing situation of each individual, so as part of our allocation policy, applicants must be:

• Young persons with familial connections to the village in which they desire to set up home.

• Key workers from both private and voluntary sector e.g. teachers or carers who will work in the village and/or surrounding areas.

• Older persons who, by moving, can make a larger house available for a for an expanding family.

• Low paid workers who are currently excluded from villages due to high housing cost who will provide services such as gardening or housework that are required.

In this way, people who fit in and contribute to a rural community are housed there. Their lives are improved immensely and their contributions mean that the community in which they live thrives as well.

Rural Community Housing believes that this is one of the most important ways in which we can support our rural communities.