Meeting rural housing need
Nationwide
Small-scale housing development tends to be more palatable in rural areas, but in some cases, development on a larger scale is needed to deliver meaningful change and to create sustainable futures for rural places.
A handful of homes can deliver benefits to rural communities, but at a smaller scale, developments do not secure the delivery of significant new infrastructure and service provision or affordable housing. In response to the government’s ambitious housing targets and the distinct challenges facing rural communities, Rural Solutions is working on a series of carefully planned village extensions and new rural settlements across the country.
From estate-led new villages in North Yorkshire to a proposed net-zero community in Derbyshire, these projects demonstrate how development at the right scale can deliver homes, jobs, green infrastructure and biodiversity net gain as part of a coherent, landscape-led vision for sustainable rural living.
Objective
To promote small and mid-sized rural settlements and village extensions that move beyond piecemeal growth, to deliver housing, infrastructure, environmental enhancement and community facilities at a scale capable of sustaining and strengthening rural communities.
Approach
New settlement development – new towns and garden communities delivering thousands, if not tens of thousands of new homes, are established means of delivering development at scale. They are, however, complex, long-term projects that can often take decades to deliver, with many never making it off the drawing board.
Smaller-scale new settlements may be a more deliverable alternative, new rural villages of hundreds of homes, that form part of a wider network of settlements. Instead of each new community having to provide every service, these smaller settlements can complement neighbouring villages - together forming a resilient ecosystem of rural services. New settlements can deliver many missing or lost services in a well-designed way, creating a service village for a wider rural hinterland.
New rural settlements require more than housing numbers; these are not ‘commuter villages’, these are places for people as an integral part of the wider fabric of rural life. They demand a clear long-term vision based on place-making principles, robust evidence, careful site selection and a masterplan that considers not only new development, but integration with what is already there.
Building on our successful track record in securing consent for larger-scale rural housing schemes, we are working with landowners and developers to bring forward comprehensive proposals for new rural settlements through Local Plan Call for Sites processes nationwide.
Our role spans strategic land promotion, visioning, master-planning and planning strategy. Each proposal is landscape-led and rooted in its local context, with early consideration of highways, drainage, habitats, infrastructure capacity and service provision to ensure proposals are technically viable and appropriate to their setting as well as ambitious.
In Derbyshire, for example, a 69-hectare brownfield and greenfield site is being promoted as an innovative new village designed to create a new chapter in the site’s history. The concept integrates housing, commercial workspace, community facilities and extensive publicly accessible green infrastructure. The intention is to achieve net zero operational carbon through renewable technologies, energy efficiency, active travel links and woodland-based carbon sequestration, alongside delivering biodiversity net gain.
Elsewhere across the UK, proposals include an estate-led new village with enhanced active travel connections and habitat expansion, and a contemporary rural service centre combining employment space, a public park and up to 1,000 homes. Across all these sites, the emphasis is on scale with purpose - development that is commercially realistic, environmentally ambitious and socially sustainable.
’Individually, these projects represent some of the most important rural regeneration projects in the country and together have the potential to redefine how we think about placemaking on a scale appropriate to the countryside.’
Outcome
Through active promotion of a portfolio of new rural settlement proposals, Rural Solutions is helping to shape the next generation of sustainable countryside communities. These schemes are progressing through Local Plan processes and demonstrate how well-planned development at scale can respond positively to housing need, climate objectives and rural economic growth.
Give us a call on 01756 797501 or email info@ruralsolutions.co.uk
We'd be delighted to have a chat.
Natural capital baselining at Castle Howard
Supporting the transition to a land management approach to protect and regenerate the 9,000 acre site for future generations, with a science-led natural capital baselining exercise.
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