Rural Coalition warns of countryside ghost towns

The Rural Coalition, which includes the Countryside Land and Business Association (CLA), Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Town and Country Planning Association and Local Government Association, has published a blueprint today (Monday, August 16) to save rural areas from freefall.

The report, The Rural Challenge, lists detailed proposals to give local people, entrepreneurs, community groups and councils power to shape their communities.

But without immediate action, it warns rural services face meltdown, house prices will continue to soar and the wages gap between rural and urban earners will continue to grow.

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, Rural Coalition chairman, said: “We need a fundamental change of approach at both national and local levels to give rural communities a more sustainable future.”

Lord Taylor, who also authored the Taylor Review of affordable housing and rural economies in 2008, said it was ‘do or die’ for David Cameron to make good his pledge on localism and commitment to the ‘Big Society’.  

“If the Government is serious about localism, it should rise to the challenge,” he said.

Key recommendations of the report include:

• Giving greater independence to local councils
• Scrapping plans for referendums in the Government’s Community Right to Build scheme which would require 90 per cent community support to build new developments. Instead, elected parish councils, empowered by a community-led plan, would be able to initiate small community-led developments.
• Giving town hall planners, local councils and communities freedom to come up with innovative solutions to the rural affordable housing crisis.
• Reforming the Housing Revenue Account and allowing councils to keep money from selling council homes, so local authorities will be freed to help address the need for new housing for young families and low-income households.
• Giving power to communities to develop local alternatives to overarching public service spending cuts through community provision such as community ownership of shops, Post Offices, pubs, broadband hubs, sustainable energy and local community transport.

Cllr Andrew Bowles, the LGA’s Rural Commission Chairman, said: “Councils have long been calling for greater autonomy and freedom to manage the finances of their own housing. This will free them up to meet the unique needs and aspirations of the areas and people they are elected to represent.”

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