Breathe in new life

Rural communities are dying. Around 300 village shops closed last year alone and 13 village pubs are lost each week. Annually, 200,000 young people are abandoning rural areas, leaving an ageing population behind.

Social housing providers could play a vital role in helping stem this decline but few, if any, are taking the holistic and imaginative approach needed to help rural people make the most of their remaining assets.

So what should housing associations do? For a start, they need to stop focusing so heavily on housing - providing affordable homes for people with no jobs and nowhere to shop or socialise will not solve the long-term problems. Instead they need to help local people take control of and develop the area they live in.

I call this concept ‘village hall to village hub’. Based around the community land trust model, it starts with the assets a village has - people, buildings, land and know-how - and develops these to form a sustainable hub, comprising amenities, housing and enterprises.

The housing provider is just one partner, along with the parish council and others, whose role is to help local people think about their needs and identify assets which can be harnessed to help their village thrive.

Even when a village has lost its shop, pub, school and post office, it will often still have assets such as a village hall and playing fields. The village hall, for instance, could be transformed into a community shop, post office and information point with internet access. A portion of the playing field could be turned over to affordable housing and housing for market rent or private sale, with the income invested to provide future funding for the hub. There could also be small enterprises, or live/work units, to boost employment.

But all of this depends on developing a rural community’s most important asset - the people who live there. Support and training will be needed for residents who take up challenging roles on a community land trust and other bodies associated with the hub. People will need to be encouraged to volunteer in the community shop or cafe. Partners will need to work to keep planning and other types of bureaucracy to a minimum.

None of this will happen quickly, and for some housing associations the village hub approach will require a shift in mind-set. It will mean working as an equal partner with other regional players, and ceding decision making to local people who would predominate on any community land trust.
But the benefits could be huge and, as the decline of rural communities accelerates, the difference a successful village hub could make to a rural community may be the difference between life and death.

Steve Cook is chief executive of Havebury Housing Partnership