JOHN CRAVEN
Increased investment in rural areas is an urgent need, say leading campaigners.
Britain’s rural communities are reaching breaking point after decades of inadequate investment in public services such as transport, in affordable housing and in measures to boost their economies. Rural areas face the triple threat of higher costs, lower funding and greater need.
That’s the verdict of leading countryside groups who urged the Chancellor Rishi Sunak to deal specifically with rural issues in his recent budget.
Well, that didn’t happen. Instead the Chancellor invited “high priority” areas across the UK to bid for shares in a £4.8 billion “Levelling Up Fund”.
There was also a £1 billion kitty for 45 English towns and a £220 million Community Renewal Fund – but nothing directly focused on the hardpressed countryside at a time when research shows that spending by Whitehall on public infrastructure is 44% higher in urban areas than in rural ones.
“But far from using the budget to address this, the Government has let the chance slide past,” says Crispin Truman, chief executive of CPRE, the countryside charity. “The green leadership that the Government’s rhetoric promises isn’t borne out as we see economic policies being pursued that could disadvantage the lives of people in rural communities and worsen the climate crisis. It simply doesn’t add up,” he says. “The challenges to the economy following the pandemic could have been met head-on with climate-friendly, community boosting green measures.”
CPRE was joined by English Rural (provider of communityled affordable housing), the Rural Services Network (RSN), and Britain’s Leading Edge (representing large rural councils) in calling on Sunak to address rural disadvantage. Research commissioned by the group revealed that, for every 100,000 people, 36% more houses classed as affordable are built in towns and cities than in rural areas. For each rural dweller, £301 is allocated from Government capital funding – for someone living in an urban area it’s £434.
“The evidence emerging from this research tells those of us working with rural communities something we know all too well – that public investment and policy-making favours urban solutions to rural problems,” asserts Martin Collett of English Rural. “The views and needs of rural communities are overlooked because of urbanbias decision-making embedded across Whitehall.”
NEED FOR FUNDING PARITY
Graham Biggs, chief executive of RSN, welcomed measures to extend coronavirus support that helps rural businesses and families. But he argues that levelling up should be within regions rather than between regions, to ensure greater parity between rural and urban areas. Of the £4.8 billion pot, with its focus on economic recovery, regeneration and transport, Biggs says: “On the face of it most rural areas will tick all those boxes, but without information on which areas are selected, it’s impossible to say if there’s been any rural proofing.”
Steve Barclay, chief secretary to the Treasury, has pledged that no community will be left behind and funds will be allocated irrespective of administrative borders. But many campaigners are demanding that a taskforce be set up to ensure rural disadvantage gets the same priority as urban deprivation on the “levelling up” agenda.
The Government will need to make sure the countryside gets its fair share of the funding on offer if it is to quell those angry voices who believe the powers in London regard them as mere afterthoughts in the hinterlands.