Report from CPRE, the countryside
charity reveals impact of overlooked rural housing crisis and
explains how the next government can fix
it.
Most recent data shows 12 rural local
authorities with rates of rough sleeping higher than national
average and 7 higher than in London.
Homelessness, a broader category, is
up 40% since 2018 in the countryside, where the average house
price is now more than £420,000.
300,000 people are waiting for social
housing in rural England, a backlog that would take 89 years to
clear at current rates of construction.
The hidden rural housing crisis
continues to worsen along with its tragic impacts on people and
families. This includes rates of rough sleeping, which CPRE
analysis has revealed are worse in rural areas than many of our
towns and cities.
Levels of homelessness, a broader
category, have leapt 40% in the countryside in just five years.
This is hardly surprising given record house prices, stagnating
wages, huge housing waiting lists and a proliferation of second
homes and short-term lets.
CPRE’s recent report ‘Unraveling a
crisis: the state of rural affordable housing in England’ sets
out the causes of the problem, lays bare its impact on real
people and explains what the government can do to fix it.
The charity is calling on the
government to redefine the term ‘affordable housing’ in line with
average local incomes, increase the minimum amount of genuinely
affordable homes and homes for social rent required by national
planning policy, and extend restrictions on the resale of
‘affordable housing’ to ensure it can be used by local people,
not as second homes or holiday lets.
Shockingly, CPRE analysis has revealed
that a greater proportion of people are sleeping rough in the
seven worst affected rural local authorities – Bedford, Boston,
North Devon, Cornwall, Boston, Bath and Northeast Somerset,
Torridge and Great Yarmouth – than they are in London, Leeds or
Norwich. People sleeping rough are defined as those sleeping
in the open air, tents, makeshift shelters or buildings not meant
for human habitation.
Unlike those in urban areas, people
sleeping rough in the countryside are often hidden out of sight,
camping in fields or sheltering in farm buildings. They are also
less likely to have access to support services. This means the
analysis, which uses the government’s own data, almost certainly
underestimates the scale of the
crisis.
In September 2023, the latest month
for which data is available, 48 people per 100,000 were sleeping
rough in Boston, England’s worst-affected rural local authority.
The figures for Bedford and North Devon, which have the
next-highest rates of rough sleeping, were 38 and 29
respectively. This compares with 23 in London, 19 in Norwich and
14 in Leeds.
In England, 12 local authorities
designated as largely or predominantly rural had levels of rough
sleeping higher than the national average (15 people per
100,000). These were spread across the country, with examples in
all regions except the North East, demonstrating the breadth of
the problem.
CPRE Director of Policy, Campaigns and
Communications Elli Moody said: ‘We are in the grip of a housing affordability crisis that
threatens to tear the heart out of rural communities. The sharp
rise in rural homelessness shows the real-life impact of record
house prices, huge waiting lists for social-rent housing and the
boom in second homes and short-term lets. We all need a safe and
secure home but decades of government inaction means that too
many people are now being denied this fundamental right.
‘We urgently need to tackle the
factors driving people out of the communities they know and love.
At CPRE the countryside charity we’re calling on the government
to redefine ‘affordable’ so that it’s pegged to local average
incomes not market rents, to set and deliver ambitious targets
for new, genuinely affordable and social-rent rural housing, and
to regulate second homes and short-term
lets.’
ENDS
‘Unraveling a crisis: the
state of rural affordable housing in England’
can be accessed here.
The rough sleeping data used in the analysis can
be accessed here.
