The right to buy is the death knell for villages

Without affordable housing rural areas will lose social diversity and become irretrievably gentrified

Every generation seems to live with the fear that it will be the one to witness the end of village life. Back in 1912, The Spectator was so worried about entire villages being sold off to speculators by “impecunious squires” that they called on the National Trust to buy up an entire representative hamlet and preserve it for posterity.

The magazine did this accepting that even the poorest inhabitants were vital to the life of the village; that it was the “manor house blending with the cottages of the poor, the inn and almshouse” that did most to reveal “the unrivalled charm of the English village and proclaim the story of the social life of the past”. The ideal village would not be preserved by ejecting the less well-off, it went on, but by “retaining them as tenants, living their village life, working their cottage gardens and paying fair rents”.

It was a similar concern for the wellbeing of rural society that prompted, in 1975, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) to host a conference on “The Future of the Village”. Then Paul Tyler, from the housing charity Shelter, asked whether private developers could be motivated to address the “catastrophic deterioration” of rural housing for lower earners. He offered a brutal warning: “If the drift goes on we will one day wake to find our villages are irretrievably gentrified, middle-class geriatric museum pieces.”

Although villages since then have generally become wealthier, many remain the vibrant and socially diverse communities The Spectator extolled a century ago. Yet this diversity could be finally be on the verge of extinction, thanks to Government proposals that will see homes that were previously accessible to all being sold off to the affluent. Families who have made huge contributions to the social fabric of our rural life are facing the prospect of being forced out of their villages because they cannot afford to stay.

Just 8 per cent of homes in rural areas are now judged to be affordable; in urban areas the figure is 20 per cent. Compared with the national average, house prices in rural areas are already higher and rural wages are lower, and the gap between them is growing. This makes a mockery of the Government’s plans to replace affordable homes to rent with “starter homes” to buy – at nine times the median salary of rural workers. In fact, these plans will only exacerbate an already very difficult situation.

To make matters worse, a Government deal with the National Housing Federation to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants will mean that young workers on lower incomes are bound to see their chances of rural accommodation disappear; many of the houses sold to tenants will in time be resold on the open market at prices far beyond the reach of the people they were designed for.

The Government has repeatedly defended itself by claiming houses sold will be replaced on a one-to-one basis. But the agreement fails to rule out the possibility that “replacement” rural homes could end up being in towns, or even in a different county altogether. Not to mention the further problem of replacement rates for right to buy – which, according to Shelter, work out at around nine homes sold for each replacement built.

The agreement also fails to guarantee that the sites housing associations acquire from landowners at discounted rates will remain securely and permanently designated for affordable and social housing for local people in need. Benevolent landowners (including Michael Eavis, the farmer and founder of the Glastonbury festival) have already indicated they are unlikely to offer land without such assurances. All this means it seems doubtful that, once it is sold off, the affordable housing stock will be replenished in rural areas.

If we are going to prevent the countryside from turning into the “gentrified museum” Paul Tyler warned us about 40 years ago, we must have a full rural exemption from the right to buy. It must protect all communities of fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, as well as rural market towns of 10,000, where there is a significant need for affordable housing. It must also clearly exempt land that landowners want to sell cheaply for affordable and social housing. Without these measures our villages face the terminal loss of the social diversity that has sustained them for centuries.

Helping people to fulfil the dream of owning their own home is an admirable ambition. But it must not come at the expense of the rural inhabitants who rely on the chance to rent, or to find genuinely affordable accommodation, while they make their way in the world. Starter homes are not an option for some. And it is simply wrong to kill off the concept of affordable housing at a time when so many young people are at the mercy of a dysfunctional market. In August, George Osborne told The

Telegraph “the lack of housing in rural areas is a scandal”. The real scandal is his omission of the word “affordable”.