Rural housing week - we need more homes
We're in a rural housing crisis, yet building more rural homes is still such a challenge.
For affordable rural homes to have any chance of being built, there first needs to be a recognised need for homes in a rural community. This need could come from anyone, but usually comes from:
- a parish council
- a local person with a housing need, or
- a landowner with a piece of land.
Once a housing need is identified, work is carried out to understand exactly what those needs are. This work is done by a Rural Housing Enabler. We’re lucky at Midlands Rural Housing to have a fantastic Project Delivery Manager, Philippa McKenna, who knows everything there is to know about rural housing enabling.
So, what is rural housing enabling?
Put simply, it’s the groundwork to getting the right homes built for local people, to sustain thriving rural communities. This work includes:
- raising awareness of the lack of affordable housing in rural communities
- research: often done through Housing Needs Surveys, to identify local housing need, and determine the home types and tenure required to meet those needs
- site identification: if there’s a housing need, finding a suitable, viable site for them to be built on
- connecting communities with key stakeholders: e.g. parish councils, local authorities, housing associations, planning and development officers, landowners etc
All of this work is based upon collaborating with the local community, so any homes that are built are truly what that community needs.
We’re doing as much of this as we can to help others develop small-scale schemes
Philippa works with local authorities, parish councils, developers and landowners across the Midlands. She also leads on providing consultancy services for Northamptonshire ACRE, the Rural Community Council (Leicestershire & Rutland) and Rural Action Derbyshire as part of a new scheme that's come from the 2023 Unleashing Rural Opportunity strategy.
The scheme, which is being delivered by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) on behalf of Defra, has committed £2.5million to fund a network of Rural Housing Enablers (RHEs) across England, to help increase the supply of affordable homes in rural areas.
What are the challenges at this stage?
One of the main challenges is getting support from a parish council and/or the local community. There are a lot of misconceptions about Housing Needs Surveys and about affordable housing.
