Manifesto > Moral Purpose: Valuing families, rebuilding communities (Introduction) | Families and Children | Policing and Criminal Justice | Population and Migration | Rural Communities

Moral Purpose: Valuing families, rebuilding communities

The rural economy has a crucial role in providing food, jobs and recreational activities.  We need to encourage employment in our rural areas and allow a reasonable level of housebuilding, otherwise we risk turning our villages increasingly into little more than commuter outposts.

Unnecessary bureaucracy and petty regulation have made remote post offices, village shops, petrol stations and other rural ventures increasingly vulnerable. At the same time, the move towards purchasing second homes in rural areas, together with long distance commuting, is pushing up house prices such that local people are often unable to purchase properties within their own area.

Young people are all too often forced to move out of villages because of the lack of affordable housing, the need to find work and the lack of good public transport. The New Party’s policies on housing and finance are strongly geared towards reducing inflationary pressures in the housing market. We will remove planning restrictions on new housing developments in specific rural areas so long as developers can provide new and sustainable jobs. We will also reduce the barriers to building new homes in remote rural areas to underpin the wider rural economy.

Our planning proposals also include the general requirement that new housing developments over a certain size must contain provision for commercial activity. This will help to ensure that rural housing developments are part of a broader effort to stimulate local economic activity rather than servicing the weekend commuter market. The New Party will remove as many unnecessary regulations as possible and we will protect rural businesses from over-regulation by local planning authorities.

Our proposals on transport include the re-opening of railway lines and stations wherever possible. We will also ensure that subsidised bus services in rural areas run at times that fit in with normal working hours so that young people are at least able to stay in their home villages. Many rural schools have been closed in recent decades. However, these schools have a social as well as educational role and this is particularly important at the primary level. Under our funding proposals for education, we will consider any viable proposal by local people to re-establish local primary schools in rural areas.

We recognise that rural crime is a major problem and we will require police forces to give proper priority to rural policing. Where there are no police officers based in the locality, we will provide resources for the appointment of locally-based special constables and we will initiate a programme of training for additional volunteer constables.

« Back | Up