West Midlands Rural Housing Research

For this study LUC and the Cambridge Centre for Planning and Housing Research investigated rural housing in the region to inform the Regional Housing Strategy.

We were able to confirm the considerable depth of the affordable rural housing shortfall across the region, as expressed by the ratio between lower quartile incomes and average house prices, and the overall levels of recorded housing need. In contrast the planned provision falls well short of addressing this situation.

We also investigated whether the employment and service use patterns of residents of affordable housing were different from those in open market houses, testing the assumption that they make a distinctive contribution to their communities. We found these patterns to be very similar though, and concluded that this is because there is so little affordable housing available in rural areas of the region that it acts more as an emergency housing service than fulfilling a contribution to mixed, sustainable communities. On this basis we recommended that if the potential contribution of affordable housing to rural communities is to be realised a significantly greater policy impact will be required in the future.

These techniques have wider application in supporting work on a variety of housing and planning policies.