Grand designs for more homes in countryside leave public unconvinced
I spent some quality time this week with Judith Derbyshire and her team at Cumbria Rural Housing Trust. A great organisation. I got home this evening from Cumbria and found this article in my research for Hinterland. I am researching the work of faith in affordable housing for a project and this article demonstrates very strongly why their work to change attitudes with practical interventions to bring forward new rural housing for local people is so important.
Ministers have failed to convince the public that more housing should be built in the countryside, a poll for The Independent shows.
Forty-eight per cent of people disagree with the statement that “the Government is right to change the planning rules to allow more homes to be built in the countryside to try to boost economic growth”, while 45 per cent agree with it, the survey by ComRes found.
Men are more likely than women to support the Coalition’s drive to tackle the housing shortage by ensuring that more homes are built in rural areas. Men back the proposal by a margin of 51 to 45 per cent but women oppose it by a margin of 51 to 40 per cent.
At a time when many younger people struggle to get on the housing ladder, a majority of people between the ages of 18 and 34 support more house building in the countryside, but the idea is opposed by a majority of those in all older age groups.
Additional housing in rural areas enjoys more public support than opposition in London, the North-east, Yorkshire and Humberside, Wales and Scotland but is opposed by more people in the South-east, the South-west, the North-west, the East Midlands and West Midlands.