13th August 2009 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Government's announcement to safeguard affordable rural homes in thousands of newly designated 'protected' areas doesn't address the root cause of the housing crisis in Britain's countryside which is the need to increase the supply of new affordable rural homes, warns the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
Brian Berry, Director of External Affairs at the FMB said:
"The simple fact is that we don't have enough affordable homes in the countryside to meet current demand and the collapse in the house building industry is only making matters worse. Large scale migration to rural areas, which has increased the rural population by 800,000 over the past ten years, has meant that rural house prices are substantially above the national average. The Government's decision to ensure that new shared ownership properties will have to remain in shared ownership for future buyers is a welcome boost but the the real need is to build more affordable rural homes to enable local people to stay in the communities where they live and work."
Berry continued:
"The countryside must be a place where all people can live as this will ensure our villages have a long term future and help safeguard the services that are needed to create a vibrant rural community. Creating more affordable rural homes is the best means to keep communities together and helps alleviate the need for young people from having to move away."
Berry concluded:
"The Government's commitment to support the development of Community Land Trusts should also be matched by making the planning system more responsive to local housing needs because its current inflexibility has been, until the recession, a serious factor in denying many people in the countryside the option to have a home of their own."
