Affordable Housing in ‘Village England’: Towards a More Systematic Approach

Abstract

Rural housing policies in England tend to focus on the generality of ‘rural areas’ or ‘rural regions’, leading to broad policy responses, or a concentration of effort (in dealing with the issue of rural housing affordability) in larger centres. Whilst there have been some attempts to focus on the needs of villages (notably through the planning exceptions approach), government has been accused of ‘lacking conviction’ in its response to recent dramatic changes in the ‘social composition of rural areas’, driven largely by concentrated gentrification in smaller village locations. This paper examines the means by which government seeks to provide affordable housing, and increase general affordability, in rural areas. It argues that a strategic approach to achieving housing affordability (triggering additional land allocations) that gave villages their a ‘fair share’ of development, coupled with continuing support for ‘planning and affordable housing’ polices and greater emphasis on working through community groups (particularly land trusts), may provide the bones of a more systematic programme of intervention in villages, which has been hitherto lacking in rural housing policy.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are extended to Adrian Moran, at the Homes and Communities Agency, for a very useful discussion on CLTs.

Notes

1. See http://www.defra.gov.uk/rural/pdfs/arh/trend-chart2.pdf