Rural Housing Week

Rural Housing Week is an annual campaign to showcase the fantastic work that housing associations do in rural communities.

Highlights from 2022

During Rural Housing Week 2022, housing associations and other stakeholders came together to highlight the urgent need for the levelling up agenda to address the challenges facing rural communities.

Thank you to everyone who helped make it a success. A fantastic range of case studies, blogs, quotes, photographs, videos and podcasts shared during the week highlighted how housing associations are working to support the levelling up agenda in rural areas. Below is a summary of the work we did and a few of the many hightlights from the week.

In the media

More than 300 affordable homes built in North and East Yorkshire as experts cite schemes as saviour for rural communities (Yorkshire Post, 4 July 2022)

Chancellor visits new Broadacres development for people with complex needs (Housing Digital, 4 July 2022)

111 lower cost homes built in Craven in past year (Craven Herald and Pioneer, 4 July 2022)

Visits from local representatives

We asked NHF members to invite their local representatives to visit their schemes. Visits like this help our councillors, MPs and mayors understand the challenges in the area and everything housing associations do to help their constituents.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has visited @BroadacresHA's £2.3m housing project, which will support people with complex needs in North Yorkshire.#ukhousing #RuralHousingWeek https://t.co/m4PJRGK7KF
— Housing Digital (@housingdigital_) July 4, 2022

🏡 Given today marks the first day of #RuralHousingWeek, I am pleased to welcome a new scheme by @BroadacresHA and @EQUANS_UK providing eco-friendly, affordable housing for local people in Thirsk.

Full story 👇https://t.co/6pVe5scnrs
— Kevin Hollinrake MP (@kevinhollinrake) July 4, 2022

Great to have @natfednews & @SelaineSaxby visit us to see the work we're doing to build affordable homes & regenerate local communities. We toured our @AnchorwoodLtd site with our partners @PearceConstruct and discussed ways we can tackle this housing crisis by working together pic.twitter.com/PrtRd5rUkI
— North Devon Homes (@NorthDevonHomes) July 4, 2022

👷To celebrate #RuralHousingWeek, @timfarron visited our rural development at Boon Town in Burton-in-Kendal.
🏘️This development will provide 28 new homes to help ensure rural communities remain sustainable for local people@HomesEngland @buildingwithyou
👉https://t.co/sPGxU0ablE
— SouthLakesHousing (@SLHNews) July 5, 2022

This #RuralHousingWeek we're celebrating our sites that are providing #affordable homes to #rural communities.

We enjoyed a great visit from Cllr Carr-Jones & @AndrewBillany1 - @DorsetCouncilUK to our 21 home Hazelbury Bryan site last month: https://t.co/6nZFzUQVJm #ukhousing pic.twitter.com/9bYnBOdrvH
— Abri (@abrigroup) July 7, 2022

Events

Housing associations up and down the country held various events both online and off. We held two online events and attended several offline, including in the House of Lords.

Rural homelessness: England’s hidden crisis?

Rough sleepers in rural areas aren’t consistently captured by traditional methods of counting, meaning the issue is often underreported. This discussion brings together experts from universities, housing associations and charities to explore how we can work together to better support service users and drive down rural homelessness.

Watch now

Is housing the key to levelling up the rural economy?

Levelling up could be an agenda tailor-made for rural communities. Rural jobs often pay less while training and development opportunities are harder to access. Despite this, rural housing is often more expensive than urban housing.

Rural Housing Week 2022