How can Rural Housing Enablers help unlock affordable homes in the countryside?
New study reveals how Rural Housing Enablers can offer strong social returns to the countryside and a growing pipeline of rural housing schemes
Rural Housing Enablers (RHEs) are experts in delivering rural affordable housing who can help landowners through the planning process. These specialists work independently from a local authority and their role is to explain to landowners and communities the process for developing rural affordable housing, help to assess local housing needs, provide advice on site suitability and build and maintain community support.
The CLA’s Programme for Government, published in 2024, called for the UK Government to “commit to long-term secure funding of at least one Rural Housing Enabler in every rural local authority”. We continue to support this programme and sit on the Defra Rural Housing Enabler National Advisory Group.
The value of Rural Housing Enablers
The government has recognised the importance of the support that RHEs provide and committed a £2.5m fund, provided through Defra, to continue this programme until March 2026.
Defra has made Action for Communities in Rural England (ACRE) the responsible body for the delivery of the RHE programme and to understand its benefits, ACRE together with the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) and EAP Research Consultancy, has run an evaluation project. The outcomes of this study have confirmed that our lobbying for continued support of the RHE programme will deliver real benefits for CLA members.
The evaluation included Social Return on Investment (SROI) modelling, which found that for the first three years of the RHE programme, for every £1 invested, an estimated £3.30 was generated in social outcome benefits. It also shows that by early 2025, RHEs had built up a pipeline of 227 prospective rural housing schemes across 19 counties in England, with the potential to create over 2,100 affordable rural homes.
The full evaluation report demonstrates the value that RHEs provide, particularly as local authorities and registered providers of social housing move their focus to larger housing sites in urban areas to meet delivery targets. In this context, RHEs facilitate rural affordable housing delivery to ensure that these communities are not left behind.
The concerns facing rural housing
However, the report also highlights the challenges that those delivering rural affordable housing, including RHEs, continue to face. These include local authority resourcing, protracted planning processes, high delivery costs, and planning frameworks that pose barriers to delivery on rural exception sites. This reiterates the importance of CLA lobbying to support members and rural communities. In particular, we have been pushing for the government to:
- Fund a new planning officer in every local planning authority
- Ringfence planning application fees to finance improvements to the planning system
- Introduce a planning passport for rural exception sites
- Make amendments to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), including allowing landowners to deliver affordable housing themselves
- Make amendments to Capital Gains Tax to remove tax liability on land sold to registered providers to improve financial viability on sites
- Review the boundaries of smaller settlements, and settlements in the green belt, to enable small-scale housing development
- Update the NPPF to ensure a housing needs assessment demonstrating need in a green belt village will meet the “very special circumstances” test
If government implements all the above measures, as well as commit to longer-term multi-year funding for the RHE programme (the evaluation report recommends five or more years), then these important roles can continue to deliver important rural affordable housing and in a more supportive environment.
To enable landowners to play a greater role in the delivery of rural affordable housing, the CLA will continue to advocate for the RHE programme and the policies which would support its work.
If you would like any support to deliver rural affordable housing, you can find out if your area is supported by an RHE by using the ACRE search tool here.
You can also contact the CLA for support and further information.
