Supporting rural communities to deliver the affordable homes they need

Every July, housing associations and partners from across England come together during Rural Housing Week to celebrate the benefits that affordable housing brings to the people who live in rural communities. From allowing families to stay together where they’ve always lived, to helping staff live near the businesses that are key to a thriving local economy, having access to a secure, good quality affordable homes is vital to ensuring the ongoing sustainability of rural towns and villages up and down the country. 

The overwhelmingly positive benefits that affordable housing brings to an area and its inhabitants means that the repercussions of the ongoing and worsening housing crisis are being particularly hard felt in rural England. Here, the shortage of affordable homes in rural areas is already much more acute than in urban areas, with only one in 10 homes classed as affordable (half the proportion in towns and cities). In small villages the shortage is even more extreme – almost a quarter of villages with populations fewer than 3,000 only have two (or fewer) affordable homes. 

It’s no surprise that demand for housing in rural areas continues to rise – waiting lists have grown by a fifth over the last three years, from 191,092 to 228,404 households. During this period, only 10,878 homes for social rent were completed in rural areas – enough to house less than a third of the additional households on waiting lists in those areas. 

The scale of this challenge is clearly not lost on those in government, and recently, we have seen some policy interventions designed to help mitigate the difficulties of building affordable housing in rural areas. Perhaps most prominently, the 2026-36 Social and Affordable Homes Programme gives welcome funding support for new housing in those settlements with fewer than 3,000 people.  

Other interventions are unfortunately less helpful – for example, government proposals, under the National Planning Policy Framework, to remove existing requirements for new medium development sites (between 10 and 49 homes) to deliver affordable housing; this would significantly harm rural areas (last year, Section 106 accounted for more than half of all new rural affordable homes). The National Housing Federation and our members are calling on the government to scrap these proposals. 

As devolution is extended across England, local leaders (and therefore voters) are getting greater freedom to set housing strategies in their region. We know from research commissioned by the Rural Housing Network last year that devolution has led to mixed results for rural affordable housing delivery across the country – so the introduction in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill of ‘rural affairs’ and ‘coastal communities’ as key strategic competences for new Strategic Authorities is hugely welcome recognition of the importance of these areas.  

This is especially relevant to this year’s Rural Housing Week, as, together with our Rural Housing Network partners, we are delighted to be launching a new practical toolkit to help rural stakeholders navigate the complexity of devolution in their region.  

We hope that this toolkit will support you in your efforts to ensure that rural communities where you are getting the social and affordable homes that they deserve. 

View the Rural Community Toolkit