Rural Housing Problem

How has the ‘rural housing problem’ changed since 1945, and to what extent have problems being mitigated by or exacerbated by government policies?

GG3350

9^th December 2002

Nick Drake

The rural has always had a housing problem.

This stems from the end of the second world war, when following years of war-orientated industry and government attention in the war effort; the were not enough houses available. More detailed analysis would identify switches in the economies of rural areas and the processes which underlay them. For example, agriculture has previously been unavoidably linked to the rural, however at the dawn of the 21^st century, the position of agriculture in the rural landscape is under threat and being challenged for legitimacy.

Following the end of the second world war, in 1945, the government sought to rebuild England and needed the houses for people to live. Three government reports commissioned between 1940 and 1942 were the first policy’s of land-use and development in rural England. These three reports individually and collectively refabricated the land-use patterns in rural areas. Details of the three reports and their relevance to town planning has been identified:

The Barlow Report 1940 – The drift to the South and formless spread of southern towns, could only be solved by effective regional planning and the development of garden cities, satellite towns and trading estates.

The Scott Report 1942 – Mistakenly identified agriculture as having a prescriptive right over agricultural land.

The Uttwart Report 1942 – Examined problems of betterment and compensation caused by land-use planning controls and suggested taxation of development gains made from planning consents.(Gilg 1978, p63)

In 1945, there was a lack of decent accommodation with modern services. Modernisation of rural properties was needed and an estimated ‘11% of houses were not of a condition to live in’. Throughout the early half of the twentieth century, the demand and necessity of public services was increasing. Public services included water, electricity, roads and increasingly more adaptation to the needs of electricity consumers.

Tied accommodation, made available if you worked on a farm estate was popular in the 1940’s. This method of housing provided in lew of wages a property maintained and owned by the farmer or landowner but used by a farm-worker and his family. Tied-accommodation went into decline after 1940 as agricultural holdings themselves began to decline in the increasingly global trading zone.

There was provision and availability of private housing in the 1940’s. What was not present was the availability of public sector rented accommodation, needed for the poor or working class majorities.

Both political parties in the 1940’s, understood the need for accommodation and began the so-called ‘post-war housing boom’. Pre-fabricated houses, needing a matter of hours to be erected sprouted up throughout the most needy regions, which would have included Greater London, Midlands and the North-West. The booming housing industry was also motivated toward the lower income household; and increasing amount of public sector (council) housing projects were completed.

The rural housing problem throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s also produced different methods of mitigation and government policy. The problems of 60’s and 70’s for rural areas are three-fold, tied-accommodation decrease with the decrease in need of agricultural labour caused by the Green Revolution, rise of the motor car industry (commuterisation) and in-migration of middle-classes from suburbs looking for the rural ‘idyll’.

Government policy during this period moved away from house building in rural areas, there was greater provision of New Towns and jobs and employment were concentrated in New Towns and cities. There was increasingly a lack of support for rural areas, and an increasing out-migration of agricultural workers.

The conservative philosophy of the 1970’s was a ‘nation of homeowners’, for this reason it introduced controls on the development of public sector rented accommodation. Central government reduced the amount of money available and gave power of land-use policies to local authorities. Housing stock was increasingly being made available for purchase. In the Housing Act of 1980, the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme allowed tenants of over 5yrs in council housing to purchase their properties. The effect of this was: 1) allowed people to secure their home, if they could afford to 2) The rural properties, with limited supply and great locations became ‘hot property’ and their house prices rose. According to supply and demand economics, rural property prices rose and remained high. There was high demand and limited supply, the result is the price that would be paid rises.

A quote from Howard Newby (1980) illustrates how rising rural house prices marginalise greater proportions of the population from the rural lifestyle: “As prices inexorably rise, so the population which actually achieves it’s goal of a house in the country becomes more socially selective. Planning controls on rural housing therefore become in effect and intent instruments of social exclusivity”.

During the Thatcher years of the 1970’s/80’s and early 90’s, government policy again shifted and waxed and waned between providing housing and concentrating economic activity in urban areas.

One of the biggest policy movements was the sale of council houses, there became a massive reduction in the availability of council houses for rent. For the economically viable, the option to purchase their property was very attractive, however for those who could not afford to buy their own houses, availability of housing was very limited. Stock of houses in rural areas was lost and councils could not either a) afford to or b) were allowed to build more public sector accommodation. All money from the sale of council houses was ‘ring fenced’ and not allowed to be spent on capital projects like house building, instead councils were forced to accept lower government grants and use housing sale proceeds to keep down rates and poll tax.

Local authorities lost their ability to build houses, this control was handed to Housing Associations instead, however there were not many for rural areas, and housing projects were concentrated in urban areas. The few rural housing associations that did exist were unable to retain the cheap accommodation in perpetuity as the government forced them to sell.

At the same time, planning policy is causing problems due to its restrictive nature in allowing new housing in rural areas. A particular problem is the Green Belt policy.

The problem of the Green Belt

A further problem arising is the increase in second homes and holiday homes. This is a particular problem in rural areas with tourist attractions and areas of great natural landscape value; such as the Lake District / Cornwall, Devon. The increase in city dwellers income under the Thatcher government caused a massive buy-up of rural houses as second homes. These properties lie empty during the winter (or are rented out to local people in the out of peak holiday season) but come the summertime they are occupied by tourists. The locals are forced to move into relatives houses or caravans etc. Government planning policy does nothing to prevent the sale of houses for holiday or 2^nd homes.

During the 1990’s, Local Councils were still not given the right to build local housing but Housing Associations started to become more effective in rural areas. Planning policies started to change to allow affordable housing for local people to be built in rural areas where private market housing would not normally be allowed (known as Housing Exceptions Policy). There was and is still massive under-provision of affordable rural housing as identified by the Rowntree Trust Housing Studies.

There was no legislation introduced to try and prevent 2^nd home ownership but some planning authorities washing to introduce policies to prevent this. Central government announced that the scheme of ½ council tax on holiday homes was to be abolished, thus making 2^nd homes less attractive financially.

Green Belt policy is still firmly in place and still forces commuters to leap-frog into rural areas. There is government emphasis now on redeveloping ‘brownfield’ sites for housing rather than ‘greenfield’ sites. There is also emphasis on locating all new development in sustainable locations, i.e. towns and villages. Smaller villages have no new development or housing unless granted under Exceptions Policy for affordable housing.

(Breheny 1999 p288 Table 8)

These growth regions contain the ‘NIMBY’ communities. (may be due to recent decades of household projects in the vicinity, strong local economies, and the great bastions of class to whom their land and their way of life cannot be disrupted). The stake of a ‘NIMBY’ activist to their land and their controls is difficult, because in many cases they will (or their parents) would have moved into the countryside for the countryside ‘idyll’, exactly what new housing projects are aiming at.

The second area of concern is population growth. As illustrated by the diagram on the following page, there is set to be an increase in population in the years 1969-2001 of 20% or 10.41 million. With Southern region growth both on average higher (20-40%) and

There is a projected need of “4.4m houses in England between 1995-2016” (Breheny 1999 p286)

The houses have to be located somewhere and ultimately, a lot of these houses will be built in the South. This will frustrate NIMBY people who object to any further development. Correct mitigation of this problem would be to remove the technological and infrastructural differences between location and regions. This however requires significant public and private sector investment.

The structure of households between 1945 and 2002 has also changed, increasingly people spend more and more time alone. This contributes to the percentage of people living alone which is set to increase by 70% (1991-2016) [Breheny 1999 p286]

Identified by Breheny (1999) are three concerns for the 21^st century and housing developments:

· Lack of housing

· Demand for accommodation has risen above population growth

· Demand in the rural has risen faster

The graph on the following page illustrates the three points mentioned.