“ Rural Towns, What Do We Know and What do We Need to Know?”

1. Small Towns for Tomorrow The Launch Conference British Academy Thursday 8 July 2010 “Rural Towns, What Do We Know and What do We Need to Know?” John Shepherd and Sam Waples Rural Evidence Research Centre Birkbeck, University of London

2. The aims of the talk: • outline the bases for creating evidence to contribute to a policy narrative for rural towns both nationwide and regionally, • creating evidence on rural towns requires investment of time and money and hence a concerted, coordinated and communal effort if wider understanding of the se places is to be achieved, • suggest that interpreting this evidence requires wider understanding of the origins, strengths and weaknesses of the different types of evidence available and that can be created, • to give some examples of innovative approaches to deriving evidence on rural towns including recent estimates of household growth, the impact of the recession and after and the analysis of service endowment, and • consider what next?

3. The leitmotif that dare not speak its name: Economic and community success deriving from new property uses, new ways of working, new services and tourism can only apply to some small towns. There is only so much activity to go round. But which towns will attract activity, where and via which route - ? Will success emerge haphazardly or by some form of rational decisions emerging based upon the making of cases via use of evidence?

4. Why is evidence on rural towns important? • because rural towns are a vital part of national and regional settlement systems but have generally been overlooked in regional, city regional, inner city debates etc and are often treated as an essentially undifferentiated part of ‘rural’, • because rural towns are growing – generally faster than larger towns and cities – with well rehearsed demographic, housing and service provision consequences, much of which is ‘under the radar’ so far as real rural places are concerned, • because many of the fastest growing places are linked to larger towns and cities for work, shopping and leisure and form the more desirable residential choices for skilled workers, • because the multiple choices for work, shopping and leisure travel offered by a rural town residential location have sustainability (CO2 footprint) consequences (about which we know little). • If the ‘Big Society’ means anything, it ought to mean that part of it is the ability for all interested organisations and individuals to source, deploy and debate about their real communities on the basis of widely available, shared and agreed evidence.

5. Rural Towns: investing in the evidence and the narrative. ONS Urban Areas and Census Data – just lines and numbers. points and lines Making lines and numbers more ‘natural’ via Typologies. names and types Identifying the ‘under the radar’ sources and making them ‘fit’. creating useful evidence Narratives of the diversity of real places e.g. via parish surveys, local benchmarking. the diversity of real places

6. Making lines and numbers more ‘natural’ for the narrative The RERC-AMT Typology of Rural Towns and Large Villages • rural towns on a rigorous, comparative basis but with sufficient social, economic and geographic detail, • population size is not a sufficient or even a helpful approach to categorisation, • provides a means for developing a narrative on the diversity of small towns, • provides a basis for the comparative assessment of the outcomes of projects, programmes and policies, but • although broad structure can be assumed to be stable but now awaiting the 2011 Census.

7. Estimating the Size and Location of Rural Town Growth 2004 – 2010 or ‘Identifying Doughnutting’ (Taylor Report) • c. 145,000 new residential addresses in • Rural towns and large villages, 2004 – 210 • most within the 2001 urban area – i.e. ‘infilling’, • and most in towns classified as ‘single persons, routine jobs’ in the typology, • followed by ‘professionals, commuting’ towns, • proportionately, the 250m adjacent area has taken significant growth across all types except coastal, retirement towns

8. Job Seeker Allowance Claimants by RuralTown Type May ‘08 to May ‘10 A continuation of work done for CRC on the impact of recession on rural towns. The steep rise in the number of JSA claimants to March 09 becomes a plateau and declines from February 2010 Small town types become more clearly differentiated post recession but towns with administrative and professional jobs remain high. Source: DWP/Nomis

9. Two Local Partnerships: JSA Claimants by Town and Type Mid Wiltshire Economic Partnership: Six Towns and a Vale in Search of a Sustainable Economic Future The Welland Partnership Source DWP/Nomis

10. Closures of Post Offices, 2004 - 2009 Larger places bore the brunt which is, perhaps, better ... ... but more disadvantaged and fast growing places did too!

11. Types of Rural Town Lacking a GP Surgery Most prevalent, though not strikingly so, in: Towns with Middle Aged persons, managerial Jobs Towns with Routine Jobs in Agriculture and Manufacturing Towns with an Age Mix and Administrative Jobs • Locations: • on the fringes of major towns and cities (city shadow?) • among the fast growing small towns of the ‘Midlands belt’ (adjustment to change?) • in some deep rural areas - frequently with a ‘sparse’ population distribution (costs of provision?)

12. Rural Towns, Homeworking and the Digital Divide ‘A workhub is a flexible workspace offering an ‘office where needed’ service to modern micro businesses and mobile workers, including those that are home based’. Workhubs Network 2010 Homeworkers: 2001 Census 9.2% of the workforce worked Mainly at/from home (ONS) 2009 12.8% of the workforce (3.7m people) Worked at or mainly from home (ONS LFS 2009) Homeworking is more prevalent in rural areas: in 2009 18.9% of rural workforce worked at or mainly from home compared with an urban figure of 11.2% and women more likely to work from home (ONS LFS 2009) One response to this has been the concept of the workhub which is not an enterprise or innovation centre in an industrial park but a town centre location providing flexible use of office facilities and perhaps business mentoring, networking for home workers. Different business models including private profit earning, non profit and public/private partnerships. The ideal is an ‘iconic’ town centre conversion in a rural town with local shops and schools within walking/cycling distance for a good fit of business and home life. Access to high speed broadband pretty much essential. How should rural towns respond?

13. Does this raise the wider issue of ‘hub towns’? More rather than less planning: on this measure 600/1500 rural towns provide a range of services what can higher order centres among small towns provide? where are the service centres missing? is this the way to reduce travel and the rural carbon footprint?

14. What else might we like to know about rural towns as places? • Other rural town data RERC have developed or experimented with: • fuel poverty data to 2007 from DECC (wards) • dimensions of disadvantage from the IMD 2004 and 2007 from CLG (wards • carbon emissions from Defra AEA Energy and Environment Statistics (1km grid). • Obvious further candidates given time and data availability: • the Interdepartmental Business Register for the business structure of small towns • the retail structure of rural towns • The Land Use Change Statistics • listed buildings for the heritage ‘offering’ of small towns. • Also very important the settlement, economic and social catchment of rural towns

15. ... in conclusion: We have tried to show what we believe is necessary to develop a policy oriented evidence base and suggested the means for developing a narrative around the evidence. The key point is to identify the towns themselves rather than to leave them ‘buried’ within a range of different geographical units used for reporting data in standard ways. This is essential if we wish rural towns to be properly represented in a range of bureaucratic processes, projects and plans – grant getting, Local Economic Assessments, Local Planning Frameworks etc. Who will now do it? CRC and RDAs – going Defra Rural Policy Unit CLG ‘mainstreamed’ across government The Third Sector and rural partnerships

16. A postscript from 2001 … • “In this chapter we have drawn on our practical experience of developing, (or attempting to develop), a Market Towns Prosperity Indicator and of attempting, in the process, to meet the needs of others for information associated with this process. • We have linked this to both wider statutory requirements such as the emerging community planning process via Local Strategic Frameworks) and more local processes such as the drawing up of Market Towns Healthcheck and Action Plans, in order to suggest a more efficient and fruitful way forward for community participation in the market town planning process. • At the inter-organisational level what is required is a more co-ordinated approach to the data requirements of institutions (including the ‘community’), and better anticipation of the implications of institutional and procedural change for data provision and analysis. • At the local level, there are two main requirements: • the extension of community capacity for obtaining and using statistical data and • a standard organisational framework for integrating and contextualising national and regional information with local knowledge and experience. “