Rural housing crisis demands action in Planning and Infrastructure Bill

The government’s latest statistics on rural housing in England paint a grim picture and support CPRE’s call for amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

Rural homelessness has surged by 73% since 2018, with nearly 28,000 people now homeless in rural areas, according to the shocking new figures. Previous CPRE analysis has revealed that the crisis is so severe that rough sleeping rates in some parts of the countryside now exceed those in major cities.

This news comes as Parliament considers the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which represents a crucial opportunity to address the deepening rural housing emergency. CPRE is calling for fundamental reforms to how genuinely affordable and social homes are defined and delivered.

Social housing construction in rural England has collapsed by 32% since 2012, with just 2,831 social homes built last year. At current rates of construction, it would take a staggering 82 years for the 300,000 people waiting for social housing in the countryside to be offered a home.

CPRE is urging the government to redefine ‘affordable’ housing based on local incomes rather than market rates, set ambitious and legally binding targets for genuinely affordable and social-rented homes, and introduce ‘use it or lose it’ that require developers to build the 1.4 million homes for which planning permission has already been granted.

The data used in this article is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics#statutory-homelessness

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/local-authority-housing-statistics-data-returns-for-2023-to-2024