Rural Communities: Government Support

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. As an MP representing rural Devon, every day I see at first hand the impact on my constituents of decisions made in Westminster. The Conservative party was pretty canny in 2019 to include in its manifesto the term “levelling up”, because what people in my constituency heard was that the historical imbalance between the west country and other parts of the country—the south-east, in particular—would be addressed. What I have been hearing in the past 18 months is that that illusion has been utterly shattered. Rural communities feel more left out and ignored than ever, and that applies to public services, local businesses and individuals.

I will talk about some of the challenges relating to rural health, rural housing and rural education. Healthcare services in areas such as my part of east Devon are patchy at best. The distances from people’s homes to the nearest acute hospital are huge, and the network of small community hospitals that used to play a vital role has been diminished. Rehabilitation used to go on in community hospitals, but that is no longer the case. In 2017, acute beds were taken out of hospitals in places such as Ottery St Mary and Seaton. Such facilities used to be part of the character of the village or small market town, but people no longer feel they are there to support them.

It would be a huge blow for us to lose a wing from Seaton community hospital, which is severely under threat. I am working with community campaigners to turn that wing into a new care hub so that we can continue to support the ageing population in that part of Devon.

The housing stock in rural areas tends to be draughty and poorly insulated, and frankly there is a lack of it. Who would not want to move from this part of the country to Devon? But that is creating a shortage of housing in towns such as Honiton. Just before I joined this debate, I took a look online and there are just six properties in the whole of Honiton available for private rent. They have three or four large bedrooms, which means that they cost way in excess of £1,000 per month, which, given Devon salaries, is out of range for a lot of key workers in the area. I appreciate that there is pressure on housing across the country, including in urban areas, but we need to take into account the fact that people in Devon travel much longer distances to go to school or work, so they have to extend their search for housing much further. Constituents sometimes come to my surgeries in tears because they simply cannot afford to live in the patch where they grew up.

Providing education in rural areas is particularly difficult, and there is a huge catchment for many schools. Mrs Ethelston’s Church of England Primary Academy in Uplyme has such a large catchment, and so many people want to send their children to it, that the space pressure is acute. The teachers and children desperately look forward to the warmer months, when they will be able to open the doors and have some of the classes taught outside, such is the pressure on space. I think of Tiverton High School, for which I fought a campaign during the by-election last summer. We have heard nothing on when we might see spades in the ground and action taken to replace that crumbling high school with something the people of Tiverton deserve.

To conclude, the idea of levelling up for a lot of people in rural areas—certainly in the west country and my part of Devon—is a great concept. But people think this is now a tool being used to win over marginal constituencies in urban areas in the midlands and the north. They have not seen it. Frankly, if I go and talk with people in my patch about levelling up, they say “Levelling up? The Government can’t even level up the pothole outside my house.” This Government say they want level up. Instead, they need to start by ensuring rural areas get a fair deal and a fair shot at success.