Rural Housing Week

Highlights of Rural Housing Week 2025

Rural Housing Week 2025 took place 7-11 July at a significant moment for the sector in the wake of several important housing announcements. These included the new £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme, the requirements of Awaab's Law and consultations on the Decent Homes Standard. 

As always, NHF members rose to the challenge, taking the opportunity to explore the implications of these important announcements on rural communities, and to show why delivering affordable housing in rural areas is key to achieving the country's ambitions for removing barriers to growth and opportunity.

Webinars

At the NHF, we hosted two webinars which you can catch up on:

• Solving the housing crisis in rural areas, which explores what needs to change to ensure we are building the homes rural areas need, and how the government’s long-term housing strategy and other policy initiatives can help to achieve more positive outcomes for people living in rural areas.
• Quality and sustainability of rural homes, which explores some of the challenges for existing homes, including flood risk and damp and mould, how new and existing homes can be designed to better withstand these, and the wider impact of climate change.

Blogs

We published two insightful blogs:

• Aileen Edmunds, Chief Executive of the Longleigh Foundation, summarises new research to better understand the complex challenges facing the delivery of social and affordable housing in rural England.
• Sarah Robson, Executive Director of Development and Asset Management at Karbon Homes, reflects on how they delivered over 220 new rural homes as part of a partnership with Homes England.

Videos

We published two new videos:

• The animated video above which we hope NHF members will be able to use to help explain how the housing crisis affects rural communities.
• An interview with Kate Henderson, Chief Executive of the NHF in which Kate talks about the challenges for housing associations in rural areas and why Rural Housing Week is important.

This government is supporting rural communities to build new homes for local people. Building on the funding available from our new Social and Affordable Homes Programme, we’re giving particular focus to how we can boost the supply of rural affordable housing. #RuralHousingWeek

— Matthew Pennycook MP (@matthewpennycookmp.bsky.social) 11 July 2025 at 15:39