Rural Poverty: Wales needs a rural development strategy
Plaid Cymru outlines a strategy to tackle rural poverty and drive rural growth
On the third day of the Royal Welsh Show (Wednesday 24 July), Plaid Cymru Leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS and Plaid Cymru Member of the Senedd for Mid and West Wales, Cefin Campbell MS, have outlined proposals on tackling rural poverty and promoting rural development in Wales.
Research from the Bevan Foundation demonstrates that rural communities have been the worst impacted by the current cost-of-living crisis: facing a triple squeeze from high costs, low incomes and poor access to services.
Often, poverty in rural areas hides in plain sight, with poor rural households often failing to be identified by conventional ways of measuring poverty or to claim benefits to which they are entitled.
The plans outlined by Plaid Cymru includes:
- Establishing a Rural Poverty Commissioner to set and ensure that targets to tackle rural poverty are set and met and that all Government policies are ‘rural-proof’
- Enhancing community transport in rural Wales, especially buses, and ensuring that young people have access to free bus travel.
- Increase affordable housing – building on Plaid Cymru’s work on second homes, and allowing for more flexibility in the planning system to bring properties into the affordable homes market
- Roll out energy efficiency schemes including retrofitting tailored for rural households.
- Expanding free childcare and introducing a Scottish-style child payment.
- Expanding broadband availability by establishing a national broadband company.
- Expand existing business supports offered through the Arfor programme for rural social enterprises, community-owned businesses, co-operatives and self-employed people.
Talking about the work he has led to develop Plaid Cymru’s new strategy on tackling rural poverty, Cefin Campbell MS said,
“We know that our rural communities are in trouble – suffering from the combined impact of Brexit and Covid-19, and the legacies of Tory austerity and the Labour Welsh Government’s failure to deliver a real strategy for reducing poverty.
“We know that rural poverty represents a distinct and specific policy challenge. Across a range of policy areas – transport, housing, energy, childcare, digital, business support and welfare – we are calling for interventions to target rural poverty reduction.
“Crucially, we are calling for better rural proofing across all of policy areas for which the Welsh Government has responsibility, and for placing rural proofing on a statutory footing, as has been done in Northern Ireland.”
Plaid Cymru Leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, added:
“This strategy, developed and stress-tested through working with stakeholders, is an expression of Plaid Cymru’s belief in and ambition for rural Wales, and of our role as a champion for our rural communities.
“Building on our proud track record of delivering from rural Wales, this strategy offers a new pathway to sustainable development in those communities: a new deal for self-employed rural workers, a new package of business supports for rural businesses, and new thinking on community energy, digital and the co-operative economy.
“This is the kind of vision for rural Wales that Plaid Cymru is committed to delivering, while others are distracted by internal party squabbles.”