BUILDING A FUTURE?
Our countryside can be a beautiful place to live but, with house prices climbing even faster than those in urban areas, might it soon be out of reach for many?
With house prices rising fast in the countryside, might the dream of making a home there be soon out of reach?
PUBLIC CONCERN ABOUT HOUSING IS AT ITS HIGHEST LEVEL FOR 40 YEARS. So says the Lyons Housing Commission, which advises government. Its most recent update named London, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge and York as hotspots of housing shortage, but cities are not the only places where residents are facing this struggle. In many parts of rural Britain, the discrepancy between demand for homes and supply has reached a tipping point that could inflict long-term damage. House prices in the countryside are on average 22 per cent higher than in urban areas, yet wages are lower (on average £19,700 in the countryside versus £26,900), making a typical rural home worth seven times annual earnings (compared with 5.9 times in towns and cities).
FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES
“We are in danger of creating a countryside that is unobtainable for many,” says Gill Payne of the National Housing Federation, which supports housing associations and campaigns for better homes. “Young people are leaving the countryside, and there are concerns about an ageing population. Figures show that by 2021, only one in eight people in the countryside will be under 35, compared with one in five in urban areas.”
Without young people to start families, set up businesses and join the workforce, villages as community hubs could become a thing of the past. Schools could close due to lack of pupils, and amenities such as pubs, shops, post offices and doctors’ surgeries will struggle to remain viable without enough people to staff and use them. “For the health and the wealth of the whole nation, we absolutely need a living, thriving, working countryside,” Gill says. “Nearly one in five of us lives in a rural area. That’s more than the combined population of London, Birmingham and Merseyside. It’s part of our identity and feeds us, both literally and culturally. So making it possible for people to live, work and bring up their families in these locations is incredibly important.”
CHANGING ATTITUDES
The good news, Gill says, is that more of us are learning to appreciate the need to build affordable housing in our green and pleasant places. Residents who initially may have been alarmed by the idea of large housing developments changing the face of historic villages are also discovering that there are less extreme solutions available. This was reflected in a recent British Social Attitudes survey, which showed that people’s support for new-house building in their area had doubled since 2010 (from 29 per cent to 57 per cent of respondents). Threequarters said they would support new houses in their locality if they were affordable to people on local incomes.
“We see a big difference to development happening when local people find their voice and say: ‘We need homes in this area,’” Gill explains. Housing associations, which built a third of all new homes in England last year, are increasingly working with communities, parish councils and local landowners to develop sites that meet local demand. “Sometimes, just three or four properties can make the difference between a village dying and a village coming back to life.”
TAKING BACK CONTROL
Housing associations, which generally build homes for social rent, affordable rent (80 per cent of market value) or shared ownership schemes, can deliver in areas deemed unprofitable, and therefore unviable, by the private sector. But they are not
the only route to affordable rural housing. Community Land Trusts (CLTS) have grown sixfold during the past six years. These vehicles for community-led development (they may be charities, social enterprise companies or co-ops) develop and manage affordable housing for the benefit of local people; there are now 225 CLTS in England and Wales, which have developed 700 permanently affordable homes and have 3,000 more in the pipeline, mostly in rural areas.
“Too often, homes are imposed on communities, often with poor design or at prices that few local people can afford,” says Tom Chance of the National CLT Network, a charity that offers support and advice to communities wishing to start their own house-building initiatives (communitylandtrusts.org.uk). “When local people take the lead, they can ensure homes are well designed, in the right location and meet the needs of the young people, who are all too often pushed out.” He welcomes the recent launch by the Department for Communities and Local Government of a £60 million annual Community Housing Fund, to help local councils fund CLTS in areas where house prices are inflated by high rates of second-home ownership: “With government increasingly recognising the benefits of CLTS, I like to think that every village will be able to take housing back into its own hands.”
What do you think? We know this is an issue that has a profound effect on many people’s lives in different ways. Email us at country.living@ hearst.co.uk to share your thoughts.