Rural exclusion report urges government to give help with car ownership

The Government should accept that a car is essential for people living in the countryside by introducing grants for those who are unemployed to buy their own vehicles and by offering means-tested help with the costs of road tax and insurance. Fuel duties collected in rural areas could be used to directly subsidise public transport or even paid into a fund to help keep village shops and schools open.

These are among the policy options identified as a result of a major investigation by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation into the experience of living in rural areas and Britain’s increasingly ‘exclusive’ countryside. Bringing together the findings of ten research projects conducted in England, Scotland and Wales, it warns that although rural areas may appear prosperous, as many as one in three people living there have experienced poverty in recent years and other ‘hidden’ exclusion.

Pensioners, including many home owners, are especially likely to be poor. But the report also points to ‘gentrification’ of the countryside, raising property prices to a point where young people cannot afford to stay in their own villages. In addition, it underlines difficulties that school and college graduates face in the jobs market, especially low pay and problems travelling to work.

Policy measures set out in the report that would form part of a sustained programme for tackling rural exclusion include:

• Means-tested grants helping unemployed people to accept job offers by subsidising the costs of buying and taxing a car and of alternative child care provision.
• Earmarking fuel duty revenue from rural areas to subsidise taxis, dial-a-ride schemes and public transport - or else for general measures to sustain village life such as mobile services, shops and schools.
• Greater investment in publicly subsidised ‘social’ housing for those unable to afford local house prices.
• Raising the relatively low take-up of welfare entitlements in rural areas by providing better access to information and advice about benefits. (The report argues that increasing the basic state pension would be the single most effective measure to address rural poverty.)
• Recognition in regeneration policies that rural partnerships should be given flexibility to tackle specific local needs rather than have their agendas imposed from above.
• Clear responsibilities for the Government’s proposed Youth Unit to develop a strategy for supporting young people in rural areas.
• A new requirement for all government policy proposals to be vetted for their impact on rural areas (‘rural exclusion-proofing’).

Prof. Mark Shucksmith of the University of Aberdeen, director of the Foundation’s Action in Rural Areas research programme and author of the report, said: “Viewed through a car window, or a television screen it is easy to see the countryside as idyllic and changeless. But the reality is rapid and uneven change, including economic and social pressures that create growing social exclusion for people on low incomes.”

He added: “Transport was a problem that all ten research studies identified as a major barrier to social inclusion in rural areas. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of government thinking when fuel taxation and other policies designed to reduce car use and ownership serve to exacerbate rural exclusion and intensify barriers to employment. Fresh ideas are clearly required.”

Young people and transport in rural areas

Also published today, one of the ten contributing research studies highlights the difficulties that young people living in rural areas experience with transport. Pamela Storey and Julia Brannen of the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education in London surveyed over 700 young people aged 15 to 24 in Somerset and Dorset. They found that:

• Learning to drive and getting a car were major priorities. Over 40 per cent of 17- to 18-year olds and more than 80 per cent of 22- to 24-year olds already owned cars.
• Young people who had financial help from their parents with driving lessons and buying a car had become drivers sooner after their 17th birthday. Non-drivers in their early 20s said lack of access to a car reinforced their feelings of exclusion. Most were working in local manual jobs or were unemployed.
• High fares, limited availability and poor publicity for the services that did exist were all barriers to making use of public transport. Young bus passengers complained about unfriendly attitudes from drivers and older passengers. They also resented paying adult fares while still in full-time education.

Pamela Storey said “Public services rarely meet the needs of young people in rural areas, so they find themselves more dependent on parents than their urban counterparts for lifts, help with driving lessons and the costs of a car. This has serious implications for young people whose parents cannot afford that kind of financial support and for rural communities. If the only households that can survive are those without children or with substantial funds, then the social mix of villages and small towns is bound to alter still further.”