Insight: What’s in it for the countryside?  KOR’s Philip Bowern asks if Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s speech will help win rural votes.

What’s in it for the countryside?  KOR’s Philip Bowern asks if Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s speech will help win rural votes.

The UK’s natural beauty, the way the countryside has nourished the arts over generations, the importance for our mental health of getting out in the fresh air… they were all there in Therese Coffey’s opening remarks this week (June 6) when she addressed the Countryside Future conference at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs even managed to name-check rural icons, from Beatrix Potter to Jeremy Clarkson, and talk up her own countryside links as MP for the Suffolk Coastal constituency.

But it will be the meat of her address and the policy announcements which followed which will be of greatest interest to the farmers, estate owners, rural workers and country dwellers affected by government policy. Many will have hoped for more.

The £7m fund she announced to test ways for the hardest to reach rural communities to get better access to fast broadband – wirelessly – might prove helpful to some, but commercial operators, including Elon Musk with his satellite Starlink system are already filling that niche, albeit at a price.

Changing the rules on driving licences, so more countryfolk can drive the local minibus might be helpful, but it will affect just a tiny minority. Extending the £2 single bus fare until October is good news – for those rural areas with a regular bus service - but the promise to consult on improving rural transport is vague and woolly. A more comprehensive overhaul of rural transport is desperately needed.

Much of the rest of Ms Coffey’s address consisted of promises to take soundings, gather information or look at policies.  Her pledge to “future proof” the rural way of life will have struck many as a largely meaningless statement without the policies and the investment to back it up.

On rural housing, probably the single biggest issue across much of rural Britain, Ms Coffey pledged the Conservatives would “facilitate the building of more homes for local people where local communities want them, powered by secure and resilient energy supplies.”  No one could possibly disagree with that, yet making it happen is proving far from easy.

Many rural estate owners have become the social housing providers in the countryside, but ever tighter regulation around property rental makes fulfilling that vital role more and more difficult while a lack of consistency with planning policy severely curtails rural building projects.

Where estates have taken the initiative to provide new homes, good communications early in the process with local planners, neighbours and the wider community has proved its worth, for many clients of KOR Communications. 

There was more clarity on what the Conservatives won’t be doing if they are able to stay in government beyond the next election, likely to come towards the second half of 2024.  “We, the Conservative Government will absolutely not be establishing a right to roam,” Ms Coffey asserted, putting a clear dividing line between the Tories and Labour, who have pledged a Scottish style policy of access to certain categories of land and a pledge to reverse restrictions on wild camping on Dartmoor.

Lord Mandelson, who served as a cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, as Peter Mandelson, who also addressed the conference, sought to paint Labour, despite doubts in many quarters about its right to roam plans, as the party of the countryside. Although keen to stress that more united than divided rural and urban voters, he was careful to urge the left in his party not to “pick a fight” with the countryside.

Acknowledging, perhaps, the reports over the years that have accused Labour of adopting policies that often appeared to discriminate against the countryside and its activities, Lord Mandelson told the conference Labour should take a “live and let live” approach.

“If it is wrong for the right wing in our country, – and I believe it is wrong – for them to stoke culture wars against minorities,” he said, “it is just as wrong for the left wing to stoke culture wars against rural minorities.”

Stressing that Labour’s appeal had to be to the whole country, he contrasted Sir Keir Starmer’s approach with that of the Conservatives who he said took rural power for granted and felt they could just “hoover up votes…without giving very much coherent ideas about the countryside between elections.”

There are strong signs, from by-election results, polling and rural commentary, that Conservatives won’t be able to rely on hoovering-up quite so many rural votes when the next election is called.  But if this rural policy announcement from the Government is designed to turn the tide then many feel it won’t be enough.

One Westcountry commentator, who has dealt with governments at the highest level in his role as chairman of the influential South West Business Council is Tim Jones.  He was underwhelmed with the Environment Secretary’s speech and concerned at the lack of direction on rural policy.

He told KOR Communications:

“The current stance that the Government is taking on rural issues and the rural economy – as articulated by the Secretary of State – is highly confusing.”

  He warned that ministers seem unable to decide on priorities and are instead juggling three elements – food production, caring for the environment and the future of the landscape – without making sufficiently firm commitments.

And he said the Treasury was still funnelling financial support into urban centres without taking proper account of the need for serious rural investment which, he said, would help rural areas deliver a great deal more for the national economy.

His concerns about a lack of direction were echoed by former Conservative government minister Rory Stewart, who also addressed the conference. He warned contradictions needed to be resolved to produce a clear strategy for the countryside, even if that meant acknowledging it wouldn’t please everyone.

Mr Stewart said:

“The idea that we often sell is that there is some perfect solution where everybody can get everything they want in the best of all possible worlds is deeply, deeply undermining.”

There is, despite a good deal of woolly thinking and generalisations, several points of difference emerging between the two main parties on rural policy as the next election approaches.  At least, some rural dwellers will say, they are talking about us.  That’s a start.

Philip Bowern

Content Writer
Rural Affairs Specialist


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