Missing the target-Part 2

As discussed in last week’s blog we know that there is a huge need for social housing, and we aren’t building nearly enough to meet that need.  

Although a chronic problem particularly in North & West Belfast, it’s also a problem in many rural communities.  The Rural Residents Forum (RRF) is facilitated by RCN and has representatives from across Northern Ireland.  It meets to discuss issues related to the provision of social housing in rural communities.  The RRF has been concerned about the target for new build social housing in rural areas being missed in four of the last five years.  RRF representatives have been involved in a series of meetings with housing spokespeople from all political parties, with Housing Executive staff (including the Chief Executive), with Housing Associations and with Department for Communities officials trying to get answers on why the target has been missed.  

From these meetings the following issues were identified as making the development of new build social housing in rural areas more difficult:

·       Sites in smaller towns and villages can be more expensive as landowners are holding on to try and maximise profits now that the housing market is recovering.  The Housing Associations are saying that in many cases they are being outbid by private developers for sites. 

·       Sites in smaller settlements can be harder to access and more expensive to bring services to.  This makes some sites too expensive for Housing Associations.

·       Housing Associations tell us that, often, they are facing objections to social housing at planning application stage as other residents don’t want social housing built beside them.

The upshot of all this is that the target for new build social housing in rural areas is being missed and renters are faced with a choice of renting in the private sector, if those properties are available in their area, or moving to larger towns where some social housing is still available.  The private rented sector has grown significantly in many rural areas (albeit from a low base) and is often the only option for people needing housing who can’t afford to buy.  There are fewer protections for private rented sector renters and one of the main problems is that tenants are forced to move when short term leases end.

Tenants who opt for the private rented sector are no longer considered in housing need, they have been housed, so they come off the Housing Executive’s waiting list.  This transfers the provision of rented housing from the public sector to the private sector.  The problem with that is that low income renters will need help with meeting their housing costs through housing benefit.  So huge amounts of public money are transferring from the public purse to private landlords through housing benefit.  The alternative is to move to the towns where social housing may still be available.  That leads to smaller towns and villages losing young families with knock on effects on schools, GP surgeries and businesses and a “gentrification” of smaller towns and villages.

Issues like the increase in hospital waiting lists or cuts to school budgets are in the media constantly but the shortage of social housing isn’t getting the same coverage.  Why is that? In my view housing is different.  Housing and the land that it sits on are commodities that are traded, and profit extracted from.  Why wouldn’t a landowner hang onto a development site to try and make as much money as possible?  There are further steps that could be taken if the political will existed.  Both the Department for Communities and the Housing Executive have powers to vest land for social housing.  To our knowledge these powers are rarely used in rural areas.  An uplift in the Housing Association Grant could be introduced to incentivise Housing Associations to build in rural areas.  A Land Value Tax could be introduced which would prevent speculation on development sites.  These more radical approaches will not happen in the absence of a Minister who can make these decisions.  That’s little consolation to the families who languish on the waiting list and whose lives are put on hold.

Missing the target....

Missing the target for New Build Social Housing in Rural Communities.

Part 1
In this 2 part Blog, our policy officer Aidan Campbell explains the shortfall in new build social housing in rural communities and what that means for prospective tenants and the communities they live in..

Photo by Ron Gemmell

Social housing in Northern Ireland is provided by social landlords below market rent for people who are in housing need.  Up until 1996 the Housing Executive was the main provider of social housing and is still the biggest social landlord in Northern Ireland.  It rents over 85,000 properties, but it no longer builds new social housing.  In the late 1990s a Housing Policy review transferred responsibility for building new social housing from the Housing Executive to the Housing Associations.   Housing Associations are independent, not for profit, social businesses that provide homes and support for people in housing need.  The Department for Communities provides Housing Association Grant (HAG), through the Housing Executive to the Associations to finance new build social housing. HAG is approximately 50% of the total capital cost per unit.  The remainder of the cost of new build social housing must be raised by the Housing Associations borrowing money from the private market or re-investing from their own funds. 

The Housing Executive, although no longer building new homes, undertakes a range of functions under its regional services remit.  If you are in housing need you apply through the Housing Executive.  They assess each applicant using a points-based system and a common waiting list is created from which both Housing Executive and Housing Associations allocate homes to those most in need.  Those applicants with 30+ points are said to be in “housing stress”. In theory this is how the system is supposed to work.  In practice, if you want to live in an area where there is high demand for social housing (such as North & West Belfast) you can get stuck on the waiting list even if you are deemed as being in housing stress.

Each year a target for new build social housing is set by Government.  The Programme for Government Outcomes Delivery Plan 2018/19 says that it will use the numbers of households in housing stress to measure and report on progress.  It also stated that in 18/19 1850 new social home starts were to be provided.  A separate rural target, which is a percentage of the overall target, is also set by the Housing Executive as part of its commitment to rural proofing.  This recognises that a percentage of social housing applicants who put down a “rural” area as their first choice when applying.  The Housing Executive defines “rural” areas as being those settlements with a population of less than 5000 people and open countryside.  For four out of the past five years the rural new build target has been missed.  The target for new build social housing in NI last year was 1850 units with 1786 started.  11.5% of that 1850 target (212 units) were supposed to be built in rural communities.  This reflects the 11.5% of applicants on the waiting list who wanted a rural area as their first choice.  Of the 212 target 129 units were provided in rural areas.  So, 96% of the overall target was achieved and the shortfall was in rural areas. 

There is a huge mismatch in the level of new build social housing compared to the level of housing need across Northern Ireland. Simply put we aren’t building enough social housing.   According to NISRA’s Northern Ireland Housing Statistics 2017/18  report 36,198 applicants were on the social housing waiting list.  Of those 24,148 were deemed to be in housing stress with 30+ points.   Although the overall target set by government for last year was almost achieved (1786 starts out of a target of 1850) it won’t make much impact on the overall waiting list.  Even if no one else came onto the waiting list it would take 13 years to build enough social housing at our current rate of new starts to house those people already in housing stress.  

In previous decades the rate of social house building was more than twice what we are building now:

“In the 1980s the Housing Executive typically built more than 5000 dwellings per year.”[1]

This is a chronic issue in North and West Belfast that has been highlighted extensively by the Participation and Practice of Rights Project and lots of other community organisations in the city.  It is also an issue, though less visible, in rural communities.  

This blog will be continued next week when Aidan talks about the provision of social housing in rural communities.

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[1] Social Housing in NI: Challenges and Policy Options, Joe Frey UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence Oct 2018 available at

Rural Broadband NI-Life in the Slow Lane......

Our Director Kate Clifford blogs on the vagaries of rural broadband and the potential that could be unlocked in rural areas if it was improved….

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

Tuesday night in rural Northern Ireland. A household comprising of two adults, two teenagers, both at exam stage, and a younger child. It was a normal evening. Homeworks and study being tackled by the older kids, dinner being made. ‘Get off the internet’ shouts the six year old who is trying to watch Netflix. I can see the TV frozen and buffering. The 15 year old shouts ‘get off the internet, I need to download my maths paper’. I’m checking work emails and the phone is buffering, and the final straw comes when number one daughter screams ‘Get off the internet!! I’m trying to download my exam timetable’.

In our rural household, a download speed of between 1.7Mbps and 0.07 Mbps depending on the time of night, means that two devices cannot run simultaneously. BT Infinity hasn’t reached us yet. We live beyond Infinity. Most evenings the Netflix account will buffer and buffer until we do a search to locate a rogue mobile or tablet device that might be stealing our band width.

Last summer our internet speed was so woefully bad we were reduced to sitting in our driveway borrowing broadband from next door’s much improved connection!  

We are not too far from our nearest town and we can afford to find alternative ways to boost the speed of our connection. But with increasing reliance on the internet for homework, work, communication and everyday life I wonder about households with worse access than ours and children who fall behind in school because they cannot afford a permanent connection nor mobile data.

I wonder about rural businesses who depend on internet connections for payments, orders, advertising and communication with their customer base and wonder just how disadvantaged they are when compared with businesses in urban centres. How much more do they pay for reliable and consistent broadband connection just because of their geographical setting?

The roll out of faster and faster speeds in urban centres is in danger of deepening a significant digital divide across this region. As urban populations become better connected and better served with faster and faster download speeds, rural areas are being left behind and playing a constant game of ‘catch up’ as technology improves and speeds increase.

The economic, social and environmental benefits of the proposed government £150m investment in ultrafast fibre broadband could be worth as much £1.2 billion to rural areas of the province. That’s the estimate contained in a report commissioned by BT and published in 2018, setting out the potential benefits resulting from an investment focused in rural areas.[1]

By improving access to the internet, economic growth in rural areas could reduce the gap with more affluent urban areas. Regional inequalities permeate NI, and public policies that address it have risen in importance in recent years. Expanding broadband access offers a potential way to reduce these inequalities, enable the growth of small business and could revitalize many of our villages and towns.

In the meantime, households like ours have to prioritize who gets to use the bandwidth and when. Sometimes we share and we compromise, prioritizing homework and work obligations over TV viewing but more often we revert to type we squabble, we fight and shout ‘get off the internet!’ 

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[1] “Fibre broadband could benefit rural economy by £1.2bn” The Newsletter 04 June 2018

5 Key Lessons for Rural Peace Building

Charmain Jones has been working at RCN as our Community Relations officer for the past 8 ½ years. In this blog she reflects on five key lessons from her rural peacebuilding work. She is the only core funded regional rural community relations officer in NI, funded by the Community Relations Council.

1. Working in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland for me is a lifetime vocation, not a job, it is something you either have passion for or you don’t. Sometimes you think you are making progress, but I find that external events can directly impact the work at a grass roots level and set it back months if not years. To do effective rural peacebuilding you have to be resilient. For me that means focusing on how I can work to make things better long term.

2. You learn very quickly that you work with very resilient individuals. For those of us of a certain generation, some who have lived through turbulent times, each one of us has travelled a very different individual journey based on our own life’s experiences and with that comes many challenges. The initial challenge for me is to try and slowly build a relationship with that person and help build trust so that more open dialogue can take place between individuals about the past and the future. I have learned that to do effective rural peacebuilding you start with the individual, you listen, you support, you empathise and then you help them on their own journey. That has a ripple effect on families, communities and wider society.

3. I have learned the skill of “narrative hospitality”. This means that I ask people to share their story with respect. I want to learn, I want to listen, I want to understand and in doing that, I aim to model the type of respectful conversation I want to have so that this is reciprocated by members of the group. You must learn to walk in the shoes of the other person and hear stories that make you uncomfortable or that are challenging. A key part of my role is to ensure people who engage in this type of dialogue come to no harm.

4. I have learned that urban and rural have a very different way of engaging in peacebuilding. I have lived beside an interface barrier most of my life and having worked in towns for over 11 years prior to RCN, the issues I worked on were visible and that visibility meant you had to try to address them. Issues of division in rural communities are more hidden and there can be a culture of polite avoidance amongst rural people. Rural engagement is more about breaking down barriers in people’s minds rather than physical walls, and that’s an even harder job. It’s about trying to break the silence that has existed for years as people live cheek by jowl and the legacy of the past still impacts today. This means my work has to be slow, it has to be consultative but also it has to be undertaken with empathy and compassion as I am asking people to step out of their comfort zones and discuss issues on a cross community basis which they may never have done before.

5. There are lessons to be learnt from rural peacebuilding that can support and aid urban regeneration and reconciliation and vice versa. I am glad to say some government departments, funders and other statutory agencies are starting to see that rural peacebuilding needs to be done differently.

I was born in 1976 and lived all my childhood and early adulthood, in what I considered then to be a normal society. It is only looking back, decades later, that I realised how abnormal things really were. Northern Ireland has significantly improved, however under the surface many issues and division remains. For me it is important to remember that we cannot do effective community development without addressing community relations issues. This will continue to be my guiding principal in the future.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund? No I hadn’t heard of it either (Part 2)

Part 1 of this blog looked at the EU Structural Funds in Northern Ireland and the origin of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.  In part 2 Policy officer Aidan Campbell discusses some of the rural considerations for the development of the UKSPF.

Photo by Robert V. Ruggiero on Unsplash

Although the proposed UKSPF is much wider than the current rural development programme and aims to replace all the various strands of EU Structural Funds we are primarily interested in the rural development strand.  The first question is whether a focus on productivity is the place to start in re-designing a rural development policy or programme for Northern Ireland.  In economic terms:

“Productivity is the key source of economic growth and competitiveness. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker, i.e., producing more goods and services for a given number of hours of work.”[1]

RCN would argue that the focus of any future rural development programme should be on social inclusion and ensuring that communities and citizens who had been left behind in rural areas are supported to become more connected into social and economic development. 

If we were agreed that raising productivity is the right objective to pursue to tackle inequalities we could still get into a heated debate over how to do it.  Will raising productivity be best achieved by investing in infrastructure like roads, telecoms etc. or by investing in rural childcare, or in better funding for all primary school children?  Its probably desirable to invest in all three but we’re told that times are tight and that “hard choices have to be made”. 

Northern Ireland has long been behind the curve in terms of productivity and economists such as Dr. Esmond Birnie have explored the gap as has Paul MacFlynn of the Nevin Economic Research Institute.  A NERI working paper identified some of the reasons why some sectors of the NI economy lag behind their British counterparts.  So the stated objective of the UKSPF of raising productivity will be a tough nut to crack in NI. 

If the headline objective of the UKSPF is to raise productivity in the region as a whole that could be achieved by focusing on productivity gains in certain sectors and geographical areas.  For example, economists have identified particular challenges in raising productivity in the agricultural sector due to the high proportion of small and part time farms here compared to Britain. 

The current Programme for Government Framework Working Draft includes an outcome that states “We prosper through a strong, competitive, regionally balanced economy” although the only indicator to monitor regional balance is the rate of employment per council area.  Employment creation won’t necessarily improve productivity if the jobs are of poor quality or if people who are excluded can’t compete for the jobs being created.  In RCN’s view actions and policy to promote balanced regional development should benefit rural citizens and communities.  Cross border considerations are also relevant in NI and are even more important in light of Brexit.  The rural development programme has played an important role in developing cross border links and contains a co-operation strand to facilitate cross border working.  It is important that UKSPF and any rural fund it contains aligns with the rural development programme in the Republic of Ireland so that cross border co-operation is facilitated.

Ministerial statements on the UKSPF have committed to respecting the devolution settlements and engaging with the devolved administrations to ensure that the fund works for all places across the UK.  This is made more difficult here in the continued absence of a functioning Assembly.  Despite the problems and the bureaucracy of EU structural funds it’s important that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  We should recognise that LEADER has made some really important investment in rural communities that would not have happened without it.  Earlier versions of LEADER were particularly important in NI in involving rural stakeholders in designing and developing the rural development programme and it played an important role in building peace in NI and developing relationships between local politicians across the political spectrum before the ceasefires in 1994.

In my view the UKSPF must ring-fence a fund for rural development as is currently the case with EU structural funds.  Without a dedicated rural strand it’s unlikely that rural communities, with dispersed populations will be able to compete for UKSPF investment against urban areas and a regionally balanced economy becomes another unfulfilled aspiration.

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[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/productivity.asp

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund? No I hadn’t heard of it either (Part 1)

Policy Officer Aidan Campbell blogs on the EU Structural Funds and their proposed successor post-Brexit the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.

Ever heard of the European Union Structural Funds? 

The purpose of the Structural Funds is to promote what the EU calls “cohesion” to reduce economic and social disparities amongst its member states, a key aim of EU regional policy.  This means that the EU invests Structural Funds in regions which have lower rates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than the EU average to enable them to catch up with those that are more prosperous.  So, for example, structural funds can be spent on building or improving infrastructure such as roads, ports or bridges or it can be spent on re-training adult learners who are long term unemployed.

Between 1989 and 1999 Northern Ireland had what was called Objective 1 status.  Objective 1 status was given by the EU to those regions that had GDP that was lower than 75% of the EU average GDP.  Objective 1 status areas attracted higher levels of EU Structural Fund investment.  Northern Ireland, located on the periphery of Europe, had endured the decline of heavy industry since the 1950s and was embroiled in the Troubles so it retained objective 1 status until 1999.  The region has benefitted from EU Structural Funds of approximately €5,356M[1] between 1989 and 2013.

Structural Funds include the European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and others click here for more detail on structural funds programmes in NI.  The current structural funds programme between 2014-2020 is worth €3,532.5 million in NI.  These sums are match funded by resources from government departments.  Whether the structural funds ever achieved their aim is debatable but a lot of money was invested.

The UK government has committed to underwrite the full value of the 2014-2020 structural funds programme but after Brexit the UK will no longer benefit from structural funds.  The Structural Funds will be replaced by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF).  This was a commitment made in the Tory party manifesto for the 2017 general election to use money which comes back to the UK as a consequence of leaving the EU to reduce inequality:

“We will use the structural fund money that comes back to the UK following Brexit to create a United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund, specifically designed to reduce inequalities between communities across our four nations.”

At a “pre-consultation” meeting earlier this month rural stakeholder organisations were invited to give their views on what the outcomes of a UKSPF might be and to talk about their experience of accessing EU structural funds.  At the meeting a short presentation was given by the UKSPF team who stated that the key objective of the UKSPF was to:

“tackle inequalities between communities by raising productivity, especially in those parts of the UK whose economies are furthest behind.”

The UKSPF aims to align with the Industrial Strategy in England and will work across the UK whilst respecting the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

So that’s the background, part 2 of this blog will look at what the initial proposals for a UKSPF are and how that relates to rural development in Northern Ireland.

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[1] This figure is EU contribution only and doesn’t include national public contributions.  Source European Funding in Northern Ireland Dr Jodie Carson and Colin Pidgeon Ni Assembly Research and information Service 2010 available at http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/Documents/RaISe/Publications/2010/General/15010.pdf

#Get on Board NI?

Policy Officer Aidan Campbell reflects on his recent public transport experiences in response to Translink’s Get on Board NI campaign which is encouraging more people to use public transport.

Image by Tim Doak

I live in a place called Derrytresk, a rural townland about 3.5 miles outside Coalisland in County Tyrone.  Where I live is also only about 1.5 miles away from the Tamnamore Roundabout Park and Ride so, although my home is rural, it can’t be considered remote.  Like most rural households we rely on our car for the almost all journeys.  A few weeks ago, due to a car breakdown I had to use the bus for a few days.  Working from home isn’t an option as the broadband speed is so poor but that’s another story.  

On the first day the clutch went, I had the kids in the car and managed to drop them to school before limping back home.  The time was now 8.20am.  I looked at the Translink website and saw the next bus serving Cookstown from Tamnamore Park and Ride was departing at 9.40 and would have me in Cookstown at 10.25.  Not ideal.  My next best option was a bus departing from Coalisland at 9.23 arriving in Cookstown for 9.53 which was better.  Next step was getting to the bus stop.  A phone call to a friend confirmed I could drop my bike at her house for the day.  A quick cycle to Coalisland up the Canal towpath and I caught the 9.23 bus and arrived in the office before 10am.    

On the second day I was headed to a conference in central Belfast starting at 10am.  That was an easier journey with a planned drop off at the Park & Ride by my wife on her way to work.  I then caught one of the frequent morning buses to Belfast that serve the Park and Ride.  A quick trip down the M1 had me in Glengall St Bus Station at 9.30am and on time for the conference I was attending.

These two different journeys, one undertaken at the last minute and one planned in advance demonstrate some of the challenges for rural citizens who need to use public transport.  The car breakdown at 8am meant that I had missed the bus from Coalisland that arrives in Cookstown before 9am.  I also had to cycle to Coalisland and find somewhere to store my bike for the return journey that evening.  The pre-planned journey to Belfast using the Park and Ride was convenient and was a better option than driving.  I was able to respond to emails on the bus and had none of the usual hassle or expense of car parking in the city centre. 

The hub and spoke model which connects arterial routes to Belfast has the potential to move more people from cars onto public transport.  My local Park & Ride opened in 2015 and is well used by people using public transport and for car-sharing.  This reduces vehicles on the road easing congestion, reducing emissions and travel times.  The only downside was the £17 return bus fare.  Park & Ride facilities are expensive to develop and need to be of a certain scale on high demand routes to be viable.  Journeys on low demand routes are more problematic and less economically viable to provide.  For many people their journeys are not linear and include drop offs to childcare or schools before work.  In my case, If I had a disability or was unable to cycle I would probably have had no option except to take a taxi.

Translink’s Get on board campaign is primarily focused on encouraging public transport use particularly in Greater Belfast to reduce congestion.  Public transport, as its currently configured, is not a realistic option for most rural journeys.