Rural villages becoming ‘rich ghettos’

Published by Julien Tremblin for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Local Government

The lack of new-build and affordable housing in the British countryside has transformed villages into “rich ghettos”, a leading academic warns.

Newcastle University Professor Mark Shucksmith, who has studied rural housing for 30 years, warns that rural communities are being “cleansed” of middle and lower-income groups and are slowly becoming “rich people ghettos”.

He told 24dash: “The consequence is that social housing isn’t built and land prices are too high. So even if affordable housing is agreed, it’s very difficult for housing associations to actually compete for the land.

“And you end up with a combination of unaffordable private housing as well as a lack of social housing. And as prices go higher and higher in those rural areas. And that’s very much to the advantage of the wealthy group to avoid new building.”

According to him, affordable rural housing is essential to the vitality and sustainability of rural communities and would help tackle the housing crisis.

He said: “If a teacher can’t afford to live there, who is going to teach at school. If the elderly are not able to afford there, despite the rural housing population aging, where will they find that social care from?”

He argues that the current situation has led wealthy people to detach themselves from society.

Professor Shucksmith said: “It means that people who are wealthy enough to be able to afford to live in rural areas are then distanced from poverty, from social problems, from multiculturalism.

“They have less of an understanding of them and less of a stake in contributing their taxes towards addressing them.”

He believes many people and lobbies are trying to prevent social housing from entering villages.

“And there are even more trying to prevent market housing from entering them,” he said.

His last research, “Exclusive Rurality: Planners as Agents of Gentrification”, published in December, focused on the reasons behind the national perception that nothing should be built in the countryside.

“It’s unthinkable for most that there could be houses built in the countryside, that we have to protect it. People think in visual terms, but not in a social aspect.”

“In the last decades, different lobbies have shared that perception such as the powerful campaign to protect rural England (CPRE) or the National Trust recently.”

However, he says, less than 10% of the land in Britain is built on. “And five per cent of it are gardens.”

Professor Shucksmith explains planning policies also played a part in the rural development status quo.

“Arguments are deployed around sustainability so that even in small communities where they’re not green belt, if there isn’t a food shop or a hourly bus service, planning permission won’t be given on the basis that people can’t live sustainably."

“But there isn’t any research to prove it’s more sustainable in cities," he added.