The rural South West is suffering from a double whammy – Britain's highest influx of people and the biggest loss of community services – a report revealed yesterday.
Despite more people than ever moving from the cities to the South West's countryside, the numbers of pubs, petrol stations, shops and post offices are closing faster than in the rest of the country.
According to the Commission for Rural Communities, which is about to be axed by the Government, the South West's rural communities are struggling to cope with thousands of new arrivals, who push up house prices and provide an increasing burden on services.
And while those local services have closed down, other services have taken their place – the South West region had the biggest increase in the number of large supermarkets than anywhere else in the past year.
Last night, the report was said to be a damning indictment of the final year of a Labour Government which 'simply did not care' about rural communities.
The chairman of the CRC said his 'State of the Countryside' report did contain some good news – that people in rural communities were much more resilient to the ravages of the recession and because they were much more self-reliant, they were able to resist the kind of hike in unemployment seen in urban areas.
"The report shows that rural England has some huge strengths and none more relevant at this time than the enduring sense of community which enables many communities to compensate for the lack of local services which their urban counterparts have taken for granted; for example, high speed broadband.
The report looked at the impact of the recession, and found that fewer rural businesses were going bust compared to those in urban areas, and the most sparsely populated rural areas have the highest levels of entrepreneurial activity.
Unemployment increased faster in the cities – at 2.3 percent compared to 2.1 percent in the countryside, but even those in work are worse off – there are lower levels of wealth for the rural employed than for city-dwellers in work.
Author: Joyce Slay
Acorn Recruitment South West will allow our articles/quotes to be reproduced on other formats as long as full accreditation is given.
