Centre for Local Policy Studies

Big Society – Small Beer? Rural Places and the drive towards and enhanced localism

Big Society – Small Beer? Rural Places and the drive towards and enhanced localism

Ivan Annibal, Rose Regeneration

Abstract

The central premise of the Big Society is that communities will be keen to step up and take on the challenge of delivering public services in their own communities themselves. There is a powerful line of argument which suggests many rural communities have already been addressing this challenge for years as a consequence of their distance from local service provision. A number of commentators have argued that greater self reliance in rural communities as a consequence of this distance from services has endowed them with greater social capital as communities than urban places.

Rose Regeneration in partnership with Rural City Media have set out test this premise through a major survey of rural dwellers and intermediary organisations (Parish Councils, local churches etc) in rural England. Their survey completed in December 2010 (comprising over 1300 responses) suggests:

Rural communities are supportive of volunteering and local engagement but not convinced of the benefits of community provision of services previously provided by the “local state”

Rural communities see themselves as very distinct from urban communities and have a distinctive and clear agenda underpinning quality of life issues in their neighbourhoods

Overall a combination of the recession and long terms trends (ie demography and climate change) are making rural communities less sustainable

All of this points to the justification for a distinct set of policy approaches to build on greater sustainability in rural communities which may well be masked or derailed by the current “one size” fits all tendencies within the roll out of the Big Society. The Big Society idea itself may not be getting to the heart of the real challenges facing sustainable rural communities in this new decade of the 21^st Century

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 5th, 2011 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Regeneration, Research and Evaluation, Third Sector (VCS) / Big Society. The entry is tagged under 11th Regeneration Management Research Network, big society, CLPS, Third Sector (VCS) / Big Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.