RURAL and coastal communities proceed to be disadvantaged by the Government’s use of urban-led funding formulas, research primarily funded by the diocese of Truro warns.
The report on social and economic equality, The Pretty Poverty Report: Cornwall rurality matters, was written by researchers at Plymouth Marjon University and published in September. A press release from the diocese on Monday said that several of the recommendations had since been considered in the newest English Indices of Deprivation (IoD) 2025, published by the Government on 30 October.
The MP for Camborne and Redruth, Perran Moon, had raised the findings in Pretty Poverty with the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, Steve Reed, and the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, specifically to deal with transport dependency, which the researchers had found to be essentially the most significant barrier to reducing levels of rural deprivation.
This is certainly one of six critical themes of rural deprivation in Cornwall identified within the report, “automobile ownership representing essential infrastructure quite than affluence”, it says. Owing to poor transport links, residents face the “rural tax”, defined as “systematic exclusion from employment, healthcare, and social opportunities without private transport”.
They also face “intense competition and intergenerational dependencies not captured by standard housing indicators”: second homes and holiday lets mean that about 20,000 homes aren’t lived in full-time.
In his foreword, Mr Moon writes: “It all comes back to the housing crisis.” The aim of the research is to look beyond the “postcard-perfect image” of Cornwall to explore a “more complex reality — one where too many local people face each day struggles”.
Other themes include seasonal work patterns and geographic constraints on profession development; an absence of local healthcare options; students’ facing long commutes, with a limited alternative of college or college, plus poor web for online learning; and community resilience, which can, the report says, create give policymakers and fudners misleading perceptions that mask underlying deprivation and make it harder to secure investment.
The Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) method — utilized by successive governments to measure poverty — has failed “to capture the true extent of distant coastal deprivation”, the report says.
Transport represents “the basic determinant of rural access to employment, healthcare, education, and social participation”. So one “flaw” of the IMD measurement is that “transport barriers” account for just 9.3 per cent of the weighting within the Barriers to Housing and Services domain. This is compared with an income domain set at 22.5 per cent, and an employment domain set at 22.5 per cent.
Another issue with IMD, the report says, is using “urban-centric indicators”. This signifies that crime statistics, public-transport measures, and service-proximity indicators “systematically undervalue rural challenges”.
In its press release, the diocese of Truro says that, although the brand new IoD measure of deprivation “was anticipated to have addressed problems with rural deprivation representation”, it “doesn’t act to the extent that the Pretty Poverty report recommends. Data access has triumphed over equity, despite the addition of an IoD 2025 Rural Report acknowledging the inadequacies for representing rural poverty.”
The report explores life in six areas of Cornwall over 18 months: St Blazey West; Bodmin St Marys Ward East; St Day; St Buryan and Sennen; St Dennis South; and Looe North East and St Martin.
The research was led by Professor Tanya Ovenden-Hope, who said this week that the brand new government measure of deprivation “offers some improvements for reporting on levels of rural deprivation, but has some technique to go to realize equity of representation compared with urban deprivation. . .
“It is crucial that policymakers and funding bodies don’t rely solely on the IoD 2025 deprivation rankings when assessing rural need. Rural and coastal communities proceed to be disadvantaged by funding formulas established by measures designed for densely populated urban contexts.”
The Bishop of Truro, the Rt Revd David Williams, said: “The Church has all the time looked beyond the gorgeous views, and beyond our well-placed pride in Cornwall, and understood what lies deeper.”
The report, he said, “should challenge leaders to look more deeply and act otherwise. The report gives a voice to the experience shared by 1000’s of Cornish people and allows folks that are sometimes ignored to be heard.”
