Rural recognition, recovery, resilience and revitalisation

Anne-Marie has lived in her small coastal town for nearly 20 years. Having grown up in London she then lived in Colchester but was pulled to the seaside by the lovely feeling of the place. There’s a really strong community spirit in the town, and a good buzz. She often feels as if she is on holiday, living where she does. The town is home to an active sailing and rowing community. She lives near the harbour, a 15 minute walk from her parents. 

She works in a hairdresser’s salon on the high street so has experienced first-hand the disruption caused by Covid to the local community. She was off work for months and only has only recently gone back to work. Some shops have closed over the course of the pandemic but most – along with pubs, cafes and restaurants – are reopening again now.

Her main concern is the high street. The local shops and businesses are very supportive of one another, and since things started reopening there has been a concerted effort to try and reinvigorate the town and get people out again – even though some people are very worried still about Covid. But they are being hampered by the fact that in recent years all the banks have left town (there used to be three banks and a building society) meaning that many people now travel to nearby Colchester or Clacton.

The issue with this is that it makes people less likely to come into the town at all – it takes people out of the town and prevents them shopping at the other places on the high street. She thinks something should have been done to stop all the banks leaving – couldn’t they have shared premises?

Loneliness has also been real problem since the pandemic started. Although there are a mix of ages in the town there are high number of older people, some of whom are still really worried about going out. Clubs and community groups – even informal things like bumping into one another at the GP’s Surgery – has stopped. That said, she feels the buzz is starting to come back to the town and she is still just as fond of the place as she was when she first moved here. The sailing club, in particular, is really active again.

Another issue is transport in and out of the town. On one hand, Anne-Marie is pleased that the buses never stopped during the pandemic, even if there were very few passengers. But more buses are needed, and the times they go at – particularly to and from Clacton – aren’t helpful at all, because by the time you’ve arrived it is almost time to catch the bus back. If they added a few more stops at different times it would be easier for people to visit for the day.

The town can also feel a little cut off – there’s only one road in and out, and if that gets blocked then it can be a real problem. She thinks this could become a real issue in the future. The town is getting more popular and people are starting to move here from bigger places, but without good transport links they might not have the infrastructure to support them.

She thinks the businesses in the high street have had plenty of support – and are helping one another – but she would welcome campaigns to encourage more people to visit as tourists. This could be a real help as visitors would go to the shops and spend money in the restaurants.

Katie lives with her parents in a small town in Shropshire, not far from the Welsh border. She recently completed her degree, but had to do the final year from home as a result of Covid disruptions. This was not easy as the course was heavily practical – and Zoom lectures with an unreliable rural internet connection didn’t make things easier.

After the pandemic she wants to go travelling before finding a job in sports therapy and in the meantime is working in the local McDonalds. With few big shops or businesses in her small town, there aren’t many options when it comes to jobs for younger people. When she looks for a sports therapy job she will probably have to leave for one of the nearby big towns or cities, unless she sets up her own business.

Katie has lived in her town her entire life, and she loves the strong community feel to it. In normal times, there’s a lot of local events, festivals and markets and the area has a lot of sports clubs and arts and crafts projects. But the pandemic has hit the area hard. Some businesses, including a bank and two pubs, haven’t reopened, and many of the local independent stores are struggling. They’re down to just one bank and one post office for the whole town now.

The local area has always had a big sports culture, with local hockey, cricket, football and rugby clubs. These are run by volunteers and have to be financially self-sufficient – so coping over the past year has been hard. For some it has been too tough, with the local swimming pool closing permanently during lockdown and the youth club in urgent need of improvement. The biggest issue in the town is the closure of one of the area’s two GPs surgeries. This has meant the other one has had to take on 4,000 extra patients and is creaking under the strain.

It feels like the local area is changing a lot too. There are a lot of ‘for sale’ signs on houses, which makes Katie worry that the area might lose some of the community spirit if there’s too much change. There’s a lot of housebuilding going on too. Katie welcomes this, but is a bit worried that the town won’t be able to cope with more people if the local services – like the GPs surgery – aren’t sorted out.

Katie would like to see more support for small local businesses and also more encouragement for tourism in the area. The town has great heritage, with a canal that used to run right through the centre, and is still popular with walkers and ramblers. But she doesn’t think people in government think about towns like hers – and she’s never heard of ‘levelling up’.

She’s encouraged by what the town is doing for itself, though. Towards the end of last year a big volunteer group was formed and, out of frustration with the local council, started fixing a few things in the local area, like cutting back hedgerows and digging paths through the woodland. They’ve got so much local support that in the recent elections they won some seats on the council. She hopes that this might lead eventually to more funding for some of the local sports and arts clubs that make the town what it is.

Gary grew up in Birmingham but has lived in the same small town in West Cornwall for 30 years. He and his partner both work three jobs to get by, and live with their 10 year old daughter in a small bungalow.

Gary loves where he lives. It’s always been a lovely place, both rural and coastal, with a great community feel to it. He worked as a lifeboat volunteer for years and saw first hand how the community can work together. But in recent times life has become a lot more challenging. Part of this is because the cost of living has gone up so much. There are more and more second home owners, both in his town and the wider county, which has both pushed up house prices and diluted the community feel of the place – as many of them are only around for a few weeks of the year. He also thinks a lot of the second home owners don’t have the right level of respect for the local area – there’s lots of parking on the road, where there shouldn’t be, and leaving the bins out when it’s not collection day. The rising cost of living has also meant there are a lot of job shortages – it’s too expensive for some people to live here.

Gary thinks that while Cornwall has a lovely image outside the county, when you scratch the surface you see a lot of deprivation. There are some big social problems in his area which he thinks would surprise people, like drug and alcohol dependency, long term unemployment and crime, including people trafficking. He gets frustrated when he hears about plans to ‘level up’ because he knows that all the money will just go to bigger towns like Redruth and Camborne, not rural areas like his. He thinks a good example of this is the recent G7 meeting, which saw a lot of investment in the roads (which are generally awful) but only around St Ives and Carbis Bay.

The last year, with Covid, has only added to these challenges. When the first lockdown started, there was a huge impact, with a lot of people scared to go out and the roads and streets completely quiet. Even though Cornwall had very few cases, the county was hit hard because tourism stopped completely. The worst impact came during the second wave. In much of the autumn, Cornwall was in Tier 1, and Gary thinks most people were being very sensible and keeping their distance. But being allowed to mingle at Christmas helped cases to spike, and by mid-January the hospital was full.

Since the lockdown lifted, the area has been completed swamped with visitors and the second home owners – this spring has been the complete opposite of 2020. Gary thinks people have been desperate to get away, particularly from the cities. Gary welcomes tourism to some extent but the pandemic has exacerbated the seasonality and intensity of it.

In the future, Gary would like to see new rules for second home owners, especially around council tax and their contributions to the local economy. He also wants Cornwall to spread its tourism around a bit more – be an all-year destination rather than just a place to go in the summer.