Comments
The Rural insight 2011 report includes comments from more than 300 rural people.
Survey respondents had strong feelings about life in rural England. A selection of their comments is show below.
You can add your thoughts using the comment facility at the foot of this page:
The best, most active rural communities are working to solve the problems now and are very generous with their time and expertise to support those who follow. We know we will get little assistance from government and must do it ourselves. We also know that solutions need to be tailored to local circumstances and that you can certainly NOT paste on urban solutions in the countryside.
My community works together to make the best of the limited resources we have available that will not change during the next year.
If the “Big Society” means anything it should encourage self-help neighbourhood action – to grow more of our own food (survey didn’t mention allotments) and share resources / equipment.
Localism, now called Big Society, could help revive sustainable rural communities. However, this is against competing pressures of globalism and international trade.
Rural location creates a demand as government policy of centralisation, “big is good”, changes. Locations and community spirit provide opportunity if people are empowered.
Quality of life will suffer for the elderly, young parents and their children and other disadvantaged groups. An improvement in our sense of community resulting in people taking responsibility for each other might mitigate this trend.
Less well off people are forced to leave to find affordable housing and employment. Communities are likely to become enclaves of retired and well off residents which is not sustainable in the long term.
Ageing population, reduced local services and increasing house prices.
Lessening support from all public bodies will hit those in rural areas the hardest due to a decrease in services, in policing, in rural economic development and an increase in awful planning red tape stopping the creation of viable businesses and communities.
Over a longer term as communities they will become less sustainable due to ageing, unaffordable housing, lack of employment and lack of affordable transport.
With less funding to maintain infrastructure and housing, and demand based on numbers, rural communities face the loss of services, lack of maintenance of publicly owned assets, and poorer housing conditions. More local shops will close. small schools will be threatened.
It appears that services to rural areas are being reduced and there are no opportunities to keep young people within the countryside. The countryside cannot survive with most of the population over 60.
Youth drainage from rural communities due to lack of affordable housing and employment opportunities. No young families = no new children = decreasing viability of local schools and less local support for ageing population. HELP!
Government cuts mean communities will need to look to themselves for support and services: this could draw them together and benefit both those drawn in to providing the voluntary help and those finding help offered by neighbours.
If the community can be freed up to make decisions regarding the things that they think will increase the sustainability of their community then they will become more sustainable.
I think rural communities will respond well to Big Society ideas and plans particularly if local government backs off and stops being so heavy handed.
When governing bodies see sense and let us get on with living our lives – we will always find the resources or make do with what we’ve got in order to survive and maintain this beautiful (mis-understood) way of life.
There is no sense of priority to do any more than current policies allow, and preferably councils much prefer to service towns. The Mathew Taylor MP Review is another country.
I see no real will by central government to tackle the underlying causes of rural isolation and deprivation. Moreover, it consistently fails to create funding formulae that properly take into account the special needs of rural local authorities, which are therefore condemned to provide second-rate services.
We’ve just seen our plans for community-run, built and administered affordable housing narrowly defeated in a Parish Poll, thanks to the efforts of a small minority determined to mislead the majority and bluff them into thinking they were voting against a site, rather than the housing itself.
The cut back in public expenditure is likely to have a major impact on services, which in turn will impact on the rural communities which already have limited access to those services. Our experience if that there is a limited pool of people in any community who are willing to get involved in community activities. Consequently, the Big Society is unlikely to be able to fill the gap.
The Big Society needs to consider rural communities more and the unique issues they face.
People are going to have to move out for more affordable housing. Schools will close and villages will become less attractive to families. Village shops will decline.
Government continues to remove key activities from Post Offices through their actions, developers threaten local shops and businesses with plans for supermarkets, funds for high speed broadband go to cities.
There is developing interest in new initiatives at local level to provide much needed services – both formally and informally but the challenge is to make sure that there is support available to help communities to do this.
With the current economic climate, I believe that essential services to rural communities will be squeezed and this will have a detrimental effect on the locality.
Cuts to transport and local services will have a negative impact.
Pressures from cuts in public spending will inevitably result in a loss of infrastructure and services. Many rural communities will not be geared up to generating local alternative provision and capacity building support/expertise is also likely to be thinner on the ground.
Lack of available funds mean that some projects especially road improvement which is much needed will not get done.
More investment in infrastructure and transport is needed to contribute to sustainability.
An ageing population and poor infrastructure can only lead to this direction.
With rising costs, reduction in rural infrastructure and further pressures on farming and agriculture into “Super-farms”, rural communities are becoming mothballed.
Limited public transport networks and the continued centralisation of facilities and employment into the larger towns mean that rural communities will be ever more reliant on private transport.