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4 March 2010. Press release from CPRE Shropshire. For immediate release.

That’s the reaction today from CPRE Shropshire to the report from the Rural Advocate [1].

Andy Boddington [2] says “The Rural Advocate has hit the nail on the head. If we do not act quickly, our villages and hamlets here in Shropshire will become the preserve of holidaymakers and the retired, and will lose their remaining jobs and services. It is time to stop just talking about the countryside and to start reviving it. That means we must urgently build affordable housing in our rural villages and hamlets.”

Andy continues: “Young people who work in rural communities breath life into them. They keep our schools alive, and help manage our farms and landscapes. They staff the services that holidaymakers and those that retire here need. But young people who work in Shropshire’s countryside too often cannot afford to live there, or they live in accommodation that is cramped and substandard. We need to build affordable houses for them. Government funding is the only practical solution for the majority of affordable homes and these houses should be built to rent, not to buy. These houses need not, and must not destroy the character of the countryside. They should be tucked into the hamlets, farms and villages of our landscape and built in local styles.”

“Shropshire Council’s current plans, outlined in its Core Strategy, suggest that it will take longer to get affordable housing built in rural areas because of the need to work with local communities. We see no reason why this should be the case, and the council should be working to deliver affordable rural housing provision as a matter of urgency.”

The Rural Advocate highlights the poverty of broadband and mobile phone access in rural areas. Andy Boddington says “Broadband is not a luxury, it is an essential service. We are concerned that government plans to roll out superfast broadband will ignore the remoter areas of Shropshire [3]. This means that young people will not benefit from the higher broadband speeds necessary for their education, businesses and social life. The government must stop treating rural areas as a technology backwater and must finance universal high speed broadband provision.”

ENDS

[1] http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk/files/ra_final%20press%20release.pdf

[2] Andy Boddington is Vice Chairman of CPRE Shropshire, the county branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

[3] http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file54154.pdf. The government has announced plans for a Next Generation Fund for superfast broadband but the proposals are only to “support the roll out of NGA to at least 90% of households in the UK by 2017”. The up to 10% of households not included are likely to be in the remote areas such as the Shropshire Hills.

Further Information

• Affordable rural housing
• CPRE Shropshire evidence to the Commission on Rural Communities Uplands Inquiry