Rural Advocate reports on realities of rural England

Posted on:
Monday, 3rd March 2008 at 12:03am

During 2007 Stuart Burgess, our chair and the government's Rural Advocate, visited rural communities across the country to listen to rural people about what matters most ─ the many benefits of rural living but also some real concerns.


His 'Report of the Rural Advocate 2007' sets out a wide-ranging package of actions for government to lead on, to tackle the issues people raised with him and ensure that rural areas continue to thrive.


“Rural life can offer great advantages and I have seen many examples of real community spirit and creative solutions to problems. But I have also witnessed people in real hardship and struggling to get by."


“The lack of affordable homes to rent and to buy continues to be the single biggest issue highlighted to me on my visits...The loss of key services and their contribution to the vitality and sense of community within rural areas has been another recurring theme."

"However, I have been especially impressed with the many creative examples of communities getting together and providing services which are under threat such as post offices being provided in pubs and community halls, as well as village shops."


Read the full press release

Download Stuart's report

Read some of the media coverage of the report

To support the launch of his report, Stuart has written a comment piece for the Telegraph


Stuart Burgess presents his Rural Advocate report to Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Stuart presents his report to Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Labour Party spring conference.


NALC have welcomed Stuart's report

ACRE have also issued a statement of support:


"ACRE warmly welcomes the report of the Rural Advocate which outlines a mixed future for England's rural communities. The work of the Rural Advocate continues to be crucial in reminding policy-makers that there is a significant proportion of the rural population whose circumstances and needs still go largely unrecognised by government."


"However, as the report also states, there are many successful initiatives undertaken by local people, supported by local government and our Rural Community Action Network, which can make a real difference to the lives of rural people, provided they receive greater recognition within national programmes and polices."

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Comments

1
A good report - as far as it goes. I think Stuart should place more emphasis on Sustainable Communities and not just Sustainable Development. More on the problems of rural transport and the increasing fuel costs for transport and space heating that are driving more households into Fuel poverty. It's exacerbated by the difficulty of insulating solid walled housing and there's a lot more of that type of house in rural areas than urban. A programme to urgently research methods and materials to carry out this work would be welcome. The problems of Hill Farming are also rightly highlighted but I think that it's a crisis and not just a drama. Higher average ages, lower incomes and inability to realise a capital sum from asset sales on retirement to provide a pension means that more are staying on in tenancies and owbner occupation than previously. A rung on the ladder has disappeared for younger people and the public goods that hill farmers have produced, a vibrant countryside, well managed and cared for is turning to a landscape of abandonment and dereliction with falling walls and less well maintained buildings as money to invest in maintenance and refurbishment dries up. My final whinge is about broadband and next generation networks. We're falling behind again and an increasing broadband gap is developing on both bandwidth and cost of service. More Gov't and RDA money should be streamed and directed to the gap areas, over 10% of households in Teesdale will have low quality broadband for a foreseeable future as providers concentrate first on the more populated areas with higher numbers of subscribers per square kilometer.
Phil Hughes.Bowes
Posted by  at 11:30pm on Monday, 3rd March 2008
2
Thanks for your comments Phil. We'll make sure they're passed on to Stuart.
Posted by  at 3:09pm on Tuesday, 4th March 2008
3
The great shortage of affordable rented accommodation has been caused by the reat sell off sale of Council houses and also police houses, LA homes for District Nurses, Water Company homes, farmer workers cottages and coastguard cottages leaving these workers with no low priced rented accommodation. The answer is to build now on the fringes of each Village Housing Association homes to rent at if necessary subsidised rents.
Posted by Brian Dodd  at 11:57am on Friday, 7th March 2008
4
Thanks for your suggestion Brian, we'll pass it on to Stuart and our housing team.
Posted by  at 11:16am on Monday, 10th March 2008
5
What did the rural advocate think of the above comments? I totally agree with the comments, but are we wasting our time posting them?
Posted by chris doyle  at 9:16am on Monday, 30th March 2009
6
Thanks for your comment Chris.
All comments posted on our website for Stuart are passed on to him and his team, and help inform his reports to the Government.
Posted by  at 9:27am on Monday, 30th March 2009
7
The issue of democratic renewal is also very important to the health of our rural communities. One of the Sustainable Communities Act proposals made by a citizen panel for Lewes District council, shortlisted this year to be sent to The Communities Secretary, drew attention to the need to address the following problem relating to the form of non statutory, unaccountable local government known as the Parish Meeting:“A review of local government at parish level, review of areas that do not have a parish council, to look at the governance of those areas and the process of creating parish councils in those areas. Particular attention being given to the relevance of the Parish Meeting to the sustainable community of the 21st century, where ALL citizens should have a basic level of statutory local representation which is fair inclusive and fit for purpose. The process of community governance review to require local discussion and a secret ballot in order to encourage full community participation."The demos report: Resuscitating Local Democracy, Bichard's work on Total Place and the NESTA report on Mass Localism all point to the urgent need to place a higher value on the future of grass roots local democracy. The parish Meeting is an anachronistic form of local representation which prevents such activity within over 1,000 rural communities. Could you please do your best to highlight this issue?
Posted by Susan Thompson  at 7:24am on Thursday, 4th March 2010

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Rural Economies & the Recession