New estate offers cheaper rural homes

By Sarah Mukherjee
Environment correspondent, BBC News

Bishop's Castle hopes to attract tourists and walkers

Life for people living in rural communities in England is much in need of improvement, a report by the Rural Services Network says. A new housing estate could offer some hope.

It is a wonderful, clear, crisp day, as I knock on the door of Colin Tompkins's house.

Colin and his wife live in a cosy, airy, three-bedroomed bungalow on a new estate - with a difference. Because this house is a very rare thing - a new, high quality, affordable home in the countryside.

The Drew Leasowe development is in Bishop's Castle, Shropshire and was once, as its name implies, the site of a fortress built to keep order on the unruly Welsh borders.

These days, the building ambition is on a smaller scale, but no less vital, according to those moving in to the new houses.

"People talk about the minimum wage as being £500 a week" says Colin, "but around here it's nothing like that. More like £250. There's very little work in the area, very little for young people to do."

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People moving in to this development can buy, rent, part-rent or part-buy, according to their circumstances - and priority is given to local people.

But the local authority has had to put its hand in its back pocket to fund the scheme - because no money was available centrally.

"We estimate that in this part of the county alone we need to be building about 250 new affordable homes every year, and we simply don't have the resources to do that" says Martin Holland, from the Shropshire Housing Group.

Discriminates

"Government is trying to impose urban solutions on rural problems, and it doesn't work," he adds.

The Rural Services Network report says that housing is a good example of this. The planning system often discriminates against rural communities trying to build low-cost housing.

Local planners are hidebound, they add, by centrally imposed principles, like the amount of development that must be built on brownfield land, or the need for access to public transport.

Another issue is how the poorest in rural areas are helped - or hindered - in their attempts to make a better life for themselves.

Further education, the report says, is becoming increasingly urbanised, meaning that you need a car - or to spend many hours on often diminishing public transport services - to get to college courses.

Another issue is the rapidly ageing population in rural areas, as retired people sell up and move to the country.

"All these people need looking after - we need young people in rural communities and the government is not providing coherent solutions," the report says.

The surrounding countryside looks stunning in the pale golden sunshine, with jagged green hills in every direction.

Indeed, Bishop's Castle is trying to reinvent itself as a walking and tourist destination.

But people here say that, without the infrastructure to keep the communities going, there could be precious little to come and enjoy in the decades to come.