Rural Communities: Prince’s Countryside Fund

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor]

My Lords, in making my first speech in this place, I put on record my appreciation of the extremely friendly welcome that I have had, and particularly the extraordinarily helpful offers of support from staff here. I only hope that my reception will be as friendly after I have made a few contributions as it has been in advance. I start by explaining my interest in this debate, not least in declaring some interests. I chair the National Housing Federation and, in an unpaid capacity, the Rural Coalition, which has been referred to and which brings together organisations such as the Country Landowners Association, CPRE, the Town and Country Planning Association, the RTPI, ACRE and the Local Government Association. Because I shall touch on some of the issues, I should also say that I chair the strategic partnership which is for delivering eco-communities—the so-called eco-towns—in St Austell in Cornwall.

I therefore have a very specific set of interests. However, my longest interest was to be a Member of Parliament for Truro and St Austell, which is not just a rural constituency but one of the poorest constituencies in the country, reflecting many of the issues that have been touched on in this extremely important debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner. So I have experienced the pressures that we are talking about today close up in one of the areas hardest hit. I have seen not just the problems but the entrepreneurialism typical of rural communities, where people are more likely to be self-employed on a low income than unemployed. I have seen, too, the importance of self-help and community, which I want to return to in a few moments. I was also privileged to be asked by the last Prime Minister to conduct a formal government review on rural housing and rural economies. That was an extraordinarily useful experience and built many relationships between all those interested in these issues. I hope that it contributed in some way to making a difference.

I did not come today to speak in this debate just to introduce myself. I came to introduce my views, which were well expressed on these issues with the publication in August of the Rural Coalition’s report, The Rural Challenge. It is not a moan, and it is not about the neediness of rural communities; it is about the things that the Government need to do to empower rural communities, where there is a spirit of entrepreneurialism and self-help, to deliver for themselves. It is a report about the way in which the big society already exists in little communities but is held back in so many ways from delivering all that it could, and is at risk from decisions taken in a primarily urban context, from the context of a big picture of government, without addressing the real needs of small rural communities and how they actually work.

I have very little time and will skip through the five key themes. I can barely touch on them, and I hope that people will take the chance to look up The Rural Challenge and see more of it. This is a mere taster.

First, I passionately believe that in the last 10 or 15 years there has been a big change in attitudes in villages, from being pretty resistant to new homes—not least to new affordable homes—to what is almost a campaigning zeal to acquire affordable homes, providing that they are in perpetuity to meet local needs. Yet they have not found the mechanisms to deliver on that. If we empower communities, especially parishes through community-led planning, we can ensure that the small numbers of homes are built in each village that are needed to address the terrible long-term needs. In some places, immigration in from wealthier areas, combined with very low incomes and planning controls which have restricted affordable housing development in the past—though quite rightly in many cases—along with selling off what affordable housing there was, have come together to kill many villages as working, living communities. I welcome the Government’s commitment to right-to-build in that context, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said earlier, although the Government have reduced the referendum requirement from 90 per cent support to 75 per cent and from all those on the register to only those who actually vote, nevertheless the hurdle remains too big for many communities. The parish and community might support a development, but to empower the nimbies in a referendum to get only the 25 per cent support needed to block it will mean that a very good government policy will not be as effective as it should be.

We cannot talk about the problems of housing and low incomes without addressing the issue of jobs. We need a planning system that is responsive to the world as it is and which recognises that a job in an office and the opportunity to have a small extension on the side of a home to employ a home-based employee for a home-based business is as important as having the sheds typically associated with old-style rural business. It must be recognised that rural market towns are at the centre of rural communities; we talk about villages, but we need to remember that the towns are important, too. There we need to deliver whole neighbourhoods and communities the workplaces and facilities—not just the houses—rather than continuing to ring our market towns with unattractive, unsuitable and ultimately self-defeating suburban estates of houses that do nothing to build rural employment and services.

Finally, in the context of the cuts that are coming—and I do not argue that cuts are not a realistic necessity in the present environment—we need to remember that in many rural communities it is a question of having any service at all, not of a choice of services. I beg the Government, in making decisions in the CSR, to recognise in rural communities that having some service, even if it is not the full service that you might expect in a large town, let alone a choice of services, should be a first priority when taking decisions in spending cuts. It is all too easy to say that a bus service, shop, community facility or extended service out into the countryside serves only a handful at high cost when it is the only service and facility. I ask that when cuts are made, if they are made, that is remembered and that if cuts need to be made in those rural communities some of those savings are offered to the community for the community itself to deliver alternatives. The bus service run by the local community with a minibus and volunteer drivers can be the solution, but even that takes money.

I thank noble Lords for allowing me to stray a little over my time, which was not intended.