The failure of the coalition Government and its predecessor to ensure that adequate affordable housing is being provided in rural areas was raised on 12th June by a Bishop in the House of Lords. His question should not have been a surprise as the 12th June has historically been the start of Rural Housing Week. Sadly the Government Minister concerned effectively  ignored his question and moved on, indicating how little chance we have of real scrutiny of our Government if all we have to go on is the occasional newsletter through our letter box or email or tweet from our MP. Perhaps more importantly the impact on the communities in need will not go away so easily and all of us will pay a price for that.

The following is the text from Hansard, which I first spotted on an excellent website called They Work For You:

The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, eight years ago the Affordable Rural Housing Commission estimated that we needed at least 11,000 affordable new homes every year in rural areas. We have scarcely ever managed more than a third of that number, and the proportion is falling. That means that those who need such homes in rural areas move to urban areas, adding to the numbers of the urban homeless and further obscuring the rural problem. What remedy does the Minister have for this state of affairs?

Baroness Stowell of Beeston: In terms of the delivery of affordable homes, we feel—certainly from the statistics that I have seen this morning—that they are being built in the areas where they are most needed. I will come back to the right reverend Prelate about rural housing because I do not have any specific data on that for him at the moment. But the fact remains that affordable house building is increasing.

The bold text in the middle of Tina Stowells response to Graham James is mine, and below I have explained why. However it is vital to understand why this should matter to all of us. Our economy and food security depends on farming and other rural businesses being maintained and Governments ignore that at their and our peril. A Partnership which I am the Chair of commissioned a study to explore how deprivation affects rural areas as well as urban areas. Yet most Government policy ignores the rural poverty because its impact is spread over a much wider area. One could cynically argue that it does not develop enough critical mass in any one constituency! The report ‘Beyond the Traditional Lens’ concluded that living in a rural area costs around £3,000 a year more than living in an urban area. Yet this cost will continue to rise unless more permanent residents who have grown up in such areas are able to remain, and indeed in some places affordable homes could act as a catalyst for reinvigorating villages that have previously lost vital services.

Meanwhile back in urban Westminster the question and answer session in the House of Lords continued despite the Baroness clearly not having the data she needed to do her job. A few answers later she made this response to one of her Conservative colleagues who asked her a question about how many homes the Macmillan Government had built:

Baroness Stowell of Beeston: I can certainly tell the noble Lord that this Conservative-led coalition has built more council housing in the last year alone in London than was built in the 13 years combined of the last Labour Government.

So it appears that whilst the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is able to articulate a robust case for the Governments creation of affordable housing in London where most Ministers live and work, the Government clearly does not feel that rural housing is a matter of need and worse still they don’t appear to know how much has actually been built. In fact it was a challenge to even find the report that the Bishop refers to on Government websites, it had been archived, being the work of a previous Government no doubt. This is perhaps a further reminder of how little Governments care about the work of their predecessors. Yet it is the taxpayer who is expected to pay for these reports to be researched, written and then in due course shredded, all while the Government talks about the issues that they feel are important. We need to resolve the issue of affordable housing in our rural communities, but we also need to resolve the selective amnesia of our elected (and in this case appointed) representatives.