Rising house prices makes rural living too expensive
A lack of affordable housing in rural areas has been highlighted as one of the key problems facing the countryside.
The rise in house prices, often accelerated by the movement of well-paid professionals from the city to the countryside, has left many local people unable to afford housing.
So whilst migration to the country continues to rise, many young people are forced to move into urban areas.
This was one of the main findings of the Countryside Agency’s report into the state of the UK’s rural areas.
It found that homelessness in rural areas was running at around 38 in every 10,000 people.
Pam Warhurst, the agency’s action chairman, told the BBC: “There are poor people living in the countryside – three million people below the poverty line. So what we’ve got to do is to make sure that when we’re looking at policies to do with the countryside, we do take on board the fact that there are areas of deprivation that at the moment are not being adequately dealt with.
“There are issues about employment, decline in traditional industries; there’s the issue about low wages – there’s lower wages on average in the countryside than there is in the urban areas.
“Another significant issue about houses in the countryside is that after the ‘right to buy’, there is a disproportionately lower number of social homes left in the countryside; 22 per cent of urban stock is social housing, only 13 per cent in the countryside, so we need to do something to address that.”
The agency recommends that 10,000 social and affordable houses are built a year in rural England, but they recognise that there are often significant objections to new house building.
Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael accepted that the report had highlighted the need for action in a number of key areas.
Mr Michael said: “Guided by the far better base of evidence we are now building up, we are designing policies which will build on success while tackling the pockets of poor economic performance and accompanying social conditions which remain.”
“Our priorities are to take action to help those areas which are lagging behind, to ensure fair access to public services and affordable housing, and to tackle social exclusion wherever it occurs. “
“As well as increasing the Housing Corporation’s target to deliver social housing in rural settlements, the Government has committed £22 billion to delivering new housing in growth areas which should relieve the pressure on housing in the regions with the highest house prices.”
Liberal Democrat rural affairs spokesman Andrew George said that the Government must act now. He proposed that there should be constraints on the ownership of second homes in areas where there is a housing shortage and restrictions on the building of private housing.
Mr George said: “Simply building new private homes in the countryside will add to problems rather than solutions.
“It may seem perverse at first sight but the best way to help meet the local housing need is to stop or at least severely constrain the building of private market homes in the countryside.
“Encouraging the development of affordable homes for locals in an otherwise restrictive planning environment can deliver lower land prices which will make the development of affordable housing for housing associations more viable.”
