“We are concerned that Essex is losing its rural character.    It’s becoming more suburban year after year.”

That was the clear message that Tom Oliver, Head of Rural Policy at CPRE, took away from his recent discussions with CPREssex members. He wanted to find out why this issue is causing such concern in our County.  Now he knows!  Tom has been invited to join the Essex Rural Commission, a body set up to look into the problems of rural life in the county.  He has joined a group of committed environmentalists who want to find ways of injecting hope into beleaguered communities of Essex.

We are not alone.  From Cumbria to Cornwall, Northumberland to Norfolk, the situation is becoming desperate.  There are reports of Post Office closures, transport cutbacks, village stores going out of business, lack of affordable housing and pubs running dry of customers.   Any one of these threats can bring distress and hardship – and now the credit crunch and the prospect of a long recession can only make the situation far worse for millions of people.  David Green, the CPREssex Plans group co-ordinator, highlighted the housing issue.  “We support affordable housing but there are so few employment opportunities in villages that people have to use their cars and drive to the urban areas for work.  There is often nothing for younger people in these communities.”

That is just one of the challenges facing everyone on the Commission.  Is it possible to create more work in the countryside? Would that mean establishing industrial estates and creating a range of employment opportunities in areas that were traditionally rural? 

“People can’t be made to work in rural areas”, said Tom.  “They have a choice and it’s still relatively cheap to travel to the towns and cities where the choice of work is greater.”

North Essex can certainly be classified as rural but everything that is happening in and around Saffron Walden, Dunmow and Thaxted – the Stansted development, new housing developments, more eco-towns, factory units - is conspiring to change the character of the area.  There seems little progress in providing jobs that offer a decent wage and a career; the better paid employment is invariably in the urban areas.

One talking point raised by Jill Hinds concerned the availability of suitable accommodation in small communities.  The needs of people change throughout their lives and this deserves more consideration by the developers and planners.  There was even a suggestion – from Peter Foreman – that we should look again at the tied cottage system of earlier centuries and see whether it could be adapted today and allow people to remain in rural areas.

Inevitably the facts and figures confirm the worrying picture of life in rural England.  “So many questions go unanswered in the bald statistics,” said Tom Oliver.  “Figures can be unreliable because comparisons between one parish and another, one village and another, one county and another, depend on many different criteria.”   Don’t expect the figures to give a clear picture;  the pessimism remains.

So what happens next?  There are no obvious solutions.  The Essex Rural Commission will surely confirm what we already know – some parts of rural Essex are under so much pressure that it is inevitable that they will drift towards becoming an urban environment. Maybe the Commission will provide some hope – but for the moment, the outlook is bleak.

DAVID WILLIAMS