How Do Rural Housing Enablers Help To Get Affordable Homes Built?

We asked Giles, a Hertfordshire-based Rural Housing Enabler (RHE), about his role and how crucial it is to getting affordable rural homes built:

Giles Meredith, Rural Housing Enabler

My name is Giles Meredith and I work for Community Development Action Herts (CDA) as a Rural Housing Enabler and Community Led Housing adviser. We are a small rural issues charity and we have been around for just over 55 years.  Older than me in fact!

It is great for me to know that I have a worthwhile job, along with people in similar roles all around the country helping communities to achieve affordable housing principally through evidencing housing need via our surveys.

We know that housing is unaffordable for many. The ratio of income to house price is 1:12 in North Hertfordshire and in other parts of Hertfordshire it’s as high as 1:16. Remember that a mortgage is usually available at a ratio 1:4. And it’s just as bad in rural areas where there may be little or no socially rented housing available as an alternative.

My challenge is in persuading communities that they want to work with us and to undertake surveys on their behalf.

Many communities are fearful of development, and we understand why — it’s partly because of the developments that they have seen around them — executive homes far out of the reach of normal people.

Happily, we can show them that what we are trying to achieve is different, through shining examples like those built by English Rural. You’d never guess that the picture below was of affordable social housing, would you?

Affordable rural housing built by English Rural

I also understand that Parish Councils are inundated with enquiries from developers and so are also wary of us. They may see themselves as guardians or gatekeepers who implicitly know best what villagers want. BUT when we ask the question, “Do you support a development of affordable housing?” in our surveys, typically the answer comes back “YES” at around 85%.

So, I’d encourage Parishes or even landowners to work with us to help them to understand who in their community is struggling to find an appropriate place to live. Our surveys are normally funded by housing associations who work with us, such as English Rural, but we are independent, and we receive no financial reward for houses built. We like to think of ourselves as an independent, honest broker.

We only report on the people who complete our surveys, and we often rely on the help of local people to get the surveys distributed and publicised. It’s a wonderful way of beginning to engage with the local community.

So, if you are a Parish Councillor or landowner in Hertfordshire, please get in touch with me. My email is giles.meredith@cdaherts.org.uk. Alternatively, you can read more about what English Rural does and contact their Development Team here.

The issues are certainly more complicated than can be dealt with in this post, but we can show you our questionnaires and our survey reports and explain how a development of affordable housing to meet a need that we have identified can be made real. I’m also happy to come along to Parish Council meetings. We work right across Hertfordshire including East and North Herts, so please get in touch.

With the cost-of-living crisis ever deepening, we need more than ever to give the poorest in our society a leg up where we can. This is certainly one way that we can start something positive.