Village Housing: Constraints and Opportunities in Rural England

An examination of housing access and affordability barriers in rural England.

Village Housing explores the housing challenges faced by England’s amenity villages, rooted in post-war counter-urbanization and a rising tide of investment demand for rural homes. It tracks solutions to date and considers what further actions might be taken to increase the equity of housing outcomes and thereby support rural economies and alternate rural futures. The authors examine first the interwar reliance on landowners to provide tied housing and post-war diversification of responses to rising housing access difficulties, including from the public and third sectors; second, recent community-led responses; and third, actions that disrupt established production processes: self-build, low impact development, and a re-emergence of council provision. These responses to the village housing challenges are set against a broader backdrop of structural constraints and opportunities to reduce those constraints through planning, land, and tax reforms that can broaden the social inclusivity and diversity of villages and support their economic well-being.
 

Nick Gallent is a professor of housing and planning at UCL. 

Iqbal Hamiduddin is a lecturer in transport planning and housing at the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL. 

Phoebe Stirling is a housing researcher based in the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. 

Meiling Wu is a researcher at the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL.