Responding to last year's Review by Matthew Taylor, MP for Truro and St Austell, into issues facing rural communities, Housing Minister Margaret Beckett and Rural Affairs Minister Huw Irranca-Davies have set out their proposals to help create strong and diverse rural communities which are able to tackle their own unique challenges at a local level.
The Review has identified both the specific challenges facing different rural areas and the similar issues facing both rural and urban economies.
The average house price in the region's rural villages was nearly ten times the average household income last year, and up to eight times in small rural towns, according to the latest statistics from the Commission for Rural Communities.
The Government will therefore give Local Authorities more flexibility to tackle the issues their communities face and the new measures announced today will help:
- Small villages to provide the homes they need for local families priced out of the housing market;
- Rural businesses to get planning permission for sites that are suitable given their rural setting; and
- Medium-sized rural towns to develop sustainable new neighbourhoods rather than building soulless housing estates on the edge of town, including through a new £1m competition to encourage best practice.
Helping the important role rural areas can play in delivering economic prosperity, a new single policy statement will be published combining existing planning guidance aimed at delivering sustainable economic development in urban and rural areas and town centres.
Housing Minister Margaret Beckett said:
"We simply must take action to overcome the unsustainable pressures facing the future of rural communities in the South West. All too often the high cost of homes and low wages are pricing young families out of their communities, with the average rural home costing up to eleven times the average salary in some rural areas.
"These subtle but important changes are the key to getting the balance right between protection and development in the countryside. This will give local communities in the South West the flexibility they need to take the right decisions on the individual issues they face."
