The decline of accessible services in rural areas

The increased costs of accessing a range of often widely dispersed services has led to rural living becoming less and less affordable, and for some completely unaffordable. This is particularly the problem for the less well-off including older and young people and families with children. This has meant that many people have been forced to move away from where they have lived often for all their lives.

Factors that have caused a decline in rural services

The decline in key rural services across rural England is caused by a range of factors:

The effect of market forces and, in some cases, the arrival of supermarkets in local areas making local services no longer competitive
The changing patterns of the rural population, with more mobile residents with different shopping and consumer patterns becoming a greater part of the rural pattern of life, for example people using services in urban areas near to their places of work
A change in expectations of rural residents themselves, no longer prepared to make do with relatively poor and expensive services and, in many cases, with the means and opportunity to access better services.

The 2007 report A loss to everyone by RCAN member, Action with Communities in Cumbria describes some of the consequences of the withdrawal of services to communities in a rural area.