David Barrowcliff, Head of Communications and Technology, English Rural

The affordable rural housing crisis in England is often described as intractable. It isn’t. It’s serious, but it’s also solvable. In villages across the country, the right homes in the right places are already helping people stay close to family, work and support networks, while keeping schools, shops, pubs and care services viable.

The scale of need is stark. English Rural’s No More Excuses report shows average rural house prices at around £419,000 – roughly 16 times typical rural earnings of £25,600. In 2024-25, only 4,501 affordable homes, just 7% of the national total, were delivered in settlements with fewer than 3,000 people, even though 17% of England’s population lives in rural areas. More than 306,000 people are on rural social housing waiting lists and, at current build rates, it’d take almost 90 years to clear the backlog.

Yet those numbers aren’t the whole story. Rural housing need is often small in scale and huge in impact. A village may not need 200 new homes. It may need eight, 10 or 12: homes for a teaching assistant, a care worker, a young farming family, an older resident wanting to downsize, or a local worker priced out by the open market. Just 10 new affordable rural homes can generate £1.4 million for the wider economy and support an average of 26 jobs.

This is why the current moment matters. For too long rural schemes have been seen as too difficult, too expensive or too small to prioritise. The latest evidence challenges that head on. No More Excuses analysed 2024/25 performance data from 145 housing associations, comparing 11 specialist rural providers with the wider sector. It found that the average cost of managing a rural home was £469 per property, compared with £842 across the sector, and tenant satisfaction was 87.6%, compared with 79.6% nationally.

That doesn’t mean rural delivery is easy. Small sites, stretched planning teams, infrastructure constraints, ecology, design expectations and local concern can all add time and cost. But the key point for housing providers is encouraging: higher development complexity doesn’t translate into poor long-term performance. Well-planned rural homes can be high-quality, popular, efficient to manage and rooted in the communities they serve.

So, what are the solutions?

First, start with local need. Housing needs surveys, parish engagement and good local data turn an abstract debate about ‘more housing’ into a practical conversation about who needs a home and why. People may oppose generic development, but many will support homes for local people, kept affordable in perpetuity.

Second, treat rural exception sites as a mainstream delivery tool. They allow affordable homes to be built on land that wouldn’t normally come forward for market housing, provided the scheme meets local need. Used well, they can unlock small, carefully designed developments that respect village character while giving local people a realistic future there.

Third, back rural housing enablers. These roles are often the quiet glue between parish councils, local authorities, landowners, residents and housing associations. They build trust, identify sites, explain need and keep schemes moving. English Rural has highlighted evidence that the Rural Housing Enabler programme returns £3.30 of social value for every £1 invested. (English Rural)

Fourth, funding and partnership models need to fit rural reality. Small schemes rarely look as neat on a spreadsheet as large urban sites, but they can deliver exceptional social value. The new Social and Affordable Homes Programme is a real opportunity: government guidance explicitly includes community-led and rural housing among the types of delivery it seeks to support. (GOV.UK)

The hopeful message is this: we already know what works. Listen locally. Design well. Protect affordability. Fund the enabling work. Treat small schemes as strategic investments, not awkward exceptions. Rural communities aren’t museum pieces; they’re living places that need teachers, carers, tradespeople, young families and older residents to flourish.

Affordable rural housing isn’t a problem beyond our reach. It’s one of the clearest opportunities we have to turn housing investment into community renewal. The evidence is there. The need is there. The solutions are there too. Now’s the time to build.