RDC(3) P&D27

Rural Development Sub-Committee

Inquiry into Poverty and Deprivation in Rural Wales

Response from Powys County Council

General

1.  What are the poverty/deprivation problems faced by rural areas? What are the specific needs of rural areas in relation to this issue?

Powys County Council is firmly of the view that there are particular challenges for rural areas.  Whether it is appropriate to label these challenges under "poverty” and "deprivation” has prompted some internal debate.  The difficulty with terms such as "poverty” and "deprivation” is that they are firmly linked with "classical” measures of deprivation e.g.

• Children living in low income households
• Working age people in employment
• Working age people living in families claiming long-term benefits

These measures tend to favour urban areas and Powys County Council knows to its cost that if arguments about resource allocation are based around such measures it will be disadvantaged.

Access to services is difficult.  Either the public have to travel a long way to access services, which is inconvenient for the public and expensive, both in terms of high levels of car ownership and high fuel prices and does not support environmental sustainability.  The alternative is for services to come to the public, which is expensive for the public services, either in having large numbers of peripatetic staff and maintaining large numbers of relatively small facilities;  

• In the event of emergency, the public are at higher risk due to the time taken for emergency services to reach them, and the time taken to reach appropriate medical facilities.  There is no DGH in Powys which invariably means travelling.  We have to work with some 8 DGH’s;  
• Costs of service delivery are higher.  Waste has to be transported for greater distances before it can be disposed of.  Social Care and Health staff have to travel significant distances between clients;
• Prices tend to be higher.  This is partly a reflection of transport costs to deliver goods and services in rural areas.  It is also partly due to a lack of competition in rural areas;
• There may be very specific issues of poverty.  The most notable is housing.  Rural housing is increasingly seen as desirable by people prepared to undertake long commutes in exchange for better "lifestyle”, those seeking retirement to a rural area or those seeking second homes.  This has the effect of pricing the local population, many of whom are on low incomes, out of the housing market.  The standard of private sector housing in rural areas is often worse than urban areas;
• Communities become unbalanced.  Powys has an exodus of well educated young people to university and employment who, in many cases, do not return.  It has an inflow of people retiring to the County and the demographics demonstrate that we will have the highest proportion of older people in Wales.  There is a gap in between, often filled by migrant workers employed in agriculture and tourism.  
• Lack of employment opportunities.  Employment in agriculture and tourism is often low paid and unattractive.  A disproportionate number of people are employed in the public sector, if the public sector is constrained, employment opportunities reduce;
• Isolation.  In particular, the young and the elderly can feel isolated in small communities and their own homes, without easy access to friends and social activities, this in turn can contribute to mental health difficulties;
• Ensuring people are informed of the services they can get.  Providing robust up to date information is more difficult and costly in a rural area.  This can, in turn, lead to problems like poor benefit uptake.

These issues are not isolated to the very rural communities.  They are pertinent to the population of the towns of Powys which often look to larger centres of population outside of Powys and even Wales for employment, key services and retail.  For example, the population of Ystradgynlais, which is not a typical market town, nevertheless have to look to Swansea and Neath for services such as critical healthcare, employment and retail opportunities.

2.  Are anti-poverty/deprivation activities best dealt with by the Welsh Assembly Government or by the Local Authorities? Why?

A partnership approach is surely the best way to address these issues.  The Welsh Assembly Government is ideally placed to provide a strategic lead and ensure policies are coherent.  Clearly, there is also a significant role to ensure that sufficient funding is in place to fulfil the policy aspirations.  Local authorities are best placed to ensure delivery "on the ground” and to provide local solutions within the national policy context.  

2.i)  What anti-poverty/deprivation initiatives (Welsh Assembly Government or Local Authority) are you aware of?

Anti-poverty/deprivation activities are embedded in a wide range of WAG and Council strategies, including the Community Strategy, Health, Social Care and Well-being Strategy, Children and Young Peoples Partnership Plan, older Peoples Strategy etc

In terms of funding streams, the list seems fairly limited.  There is the Deprivation Grant.  This is an unhypothecated grant and there is £22m available across Wales, Powys receives £40k!  Some Powys communities have benefited from Communities First.  Some Powys schools benefit from the free breakfast initiative.  Initiatives such as Flying Start, Sure Start and the Genesis Project all have a role in addressing rural poverty and deprivation.   

2.ii)  Do these anti-poverty/deprivation policies adequately address the needs of rural areas?

No, there needs to be a clearer understanding of the issues facing rural areas and there may need to be different solutions.  One size does not fit all of Wales.   Free breakfasts are a case in point, in rural areas with relatively small schools, it can be expensive to implement and difficult to access if the child is dependent on publicly provided school transport.  Another example is Extra Care Housing, in Powys a 100 bed unit would not meet local need.

3.  What specific measures would you like to see implemented by the Welsh Assembly Government to deal with poverty/deprivation issues in rural Wales?

• A suspension to right to buy and a housing subsidy system that incentivises affordable public sector housing;
• A funding system that adequately recognises the difficulties and costs of service provision in rural areas;
• Better road network to open the economy of the rural hinterland and improve access to key services, including better east to west links from England into Wales.  This would also reduce serious road traffic accidents;
• More incentives for business to relocate to rural areas;
• More focussed approach to the provision of subsidised public transport;
• Better broadband access for rural areas;
• Better mobile telephone coverage for rural areas;
• An examination of whether the welfare benefits system, including take-up, sufficiently helps rural areas;
• More support to address the poor standard of private sector housing in rural areas;
• Encourage workforce planning across the public and voluntary sectors that allows generic work roles to avoid duplication of services and expense;
• Support for local communities to develop local services, the bottom up approach.

4.  What examples of good practice are you aware of in Wales/other parts of the UK/ overseas?

The County Council would commend "Rural Disadvantage - Reviewing the Evidence” by the Commission for Rural Communities, published October, 2006 as an excellent source for analysing the issues facing rural communities.

Population Groups

For each of the groups (or whichever is of relevance to you), please consider the following questions:

5.  To what extent are these groups living in poverty/deprivation in rural Wales?
6.  What poverty/deprivation issues are experienced by these population groups that are specific to rural areas? Please highlight any relevant evidence or research that you are aware of.

All the four groups are affected by the rural poverty issues outlined in 7.

7.  How do the problems of the 4 population groups differ across rural Wales (for example between areas in West Wales and East Wales)?

a) low wages

Powys is one of the lowest waged areas in Wales, with an economy based on agriculture and tourism.

The mean gross weekly pay for full time employee jobs as at April 2007 was

Source Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) Table 7.1a, ONS published November 2007 © Crown Copyright  http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/ashe1107.pdf

b) high self employment

Powys continues to have one of highest rates of self-employment in Wales  

`The estimates of rates of self employment among working age people in the year ending March 2007 were

Source: ONS Annual Population Survey year ending March 2007,ONS, published 2007, © Crown Copyright  

c) low earnings from self-employment

In Powys the self employed  earn 16% less on average than the employed. (Wales 14%)

The estimated mean self-employment income and employment incomes  in 2004-05 were  

Source: Survey of Personal Incomes 2004-05 HMRC, published January 2007, © Crown Copyright  

d) lack of large employers, predominance of small businesses

There are no large employers left in Powys outside the public sector, and Powys has the highest proportion of jobs in workplaces employing less than 5 people out of all the 22 Welsh Authorities.

The estimated proportion of all jobs (excluding agricultural farm based employment in work) by size of business in 2006 were

Source Annual Business Inquiry workplace analysis for 2006, ONS published 2007 © Crown Copyright  

e) high ratio of house prices to incomes

Powys has among the highest ratios of house prices to incomes in Wales.

The ratios of the average house prices for two- and three-bedroom dwellings price to average household incomes of working households aged 20-39 in 2005, were

Source "The geography of affordable and unaffordable housing and the ability of younger working households to become home owners”, Steve Wilcox, pub by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, © Steve Wilcox 2006

http://www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1951-affordability-housing-regions.pdf

f) old private housing stock in poor condition

Powys has a higher proportion of older private housing stock in poor condition in comparison with Wales as a whole.

The Housing Deprivation domain in the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000(1) (1) set out to identify people living in unsatisfactory housing, using the proportions of housing in disrepair, houses without central heating and houses lacking roof/loft insulation from the 1998 Welsh House Condition Survey. It concluded that "In Powys levels of deprivation were higher than in Wales for Housing” and that 16 of the 75 Powys wards were ranked among the worst 100 in Wales for unsatisfactory housing.

Source Welsh Index of Multiple deprivation 2000, Housing Domain, Local Authority Analysis, NAW and WLGA, published August 2000 © Crown Copyright

http://www.dataunitwales.gov.uk/eng/Project.asp?nc=MKJI&id=699

g) public transport and access to services

Powys is one of the worst areas in Wales for provision of public transport and access to basic local services

The Access to Services Domain in the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2005 set out to identify people who could not access basic local services within reasonable time on foot or by public transport. 46% of the 80 Lower Super Output areas (LSOAs) in Powys were among the 10% most deprived LSOAs in Wales for Access to Services

Source Welsh Index of Multiple deprivation 2005, Access Domain & Local Authority Analysis, WAG and LGDU  published Sept 2005 © Crown Copyright

http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/theme/wimd2005/?lang=en

h) Declining economic health

The index of Gross Value Added (GVA) for Powys, as a percentage of the UK GVA has fallen over the last decade, even faster than has the overall index for Wales.

The sub regional Gross Value Added Index measures in 1995 and 2005 were

Source StatsWales Table 000300,Sub-regional Gross Value Added (GVA), by Welsh NUTS2 area , ONS, updated Dec 2007

Other Aspects of Poverty in Powys

i) decline in local services – post office closures

j) increasing fuel prices, and concomitant fuel poverty

k)cost of delivering local services to sparse population.  Regulation has increased cost of services to people e.g. domiciliary care.

l) older population, ageing faster

m)the necessity to commute out of county e.g. youngsters with a disability often have to go out of County for specialist placements/support.

8.  In what ways are any sub-groups within the four population groups particularly affected by rural poverty/deprivation, for example, disabled economically inactive people or female older people?

The economy of Powys is in decline, as shown by the decrease in GVA per capita (indexed to UK) in the last ten years, compared with the other rural counties which have shown  stability in this indicator or shown a modest increase in recent years.

9.  What are the most effective ways of tackling poverty/deprivation for individuals from these groups living in rural parts of Wales?

All those who cannot drive because they are too young, too old, disabled or the second adult in a household with only one car are disproportionately affected by the lack of public transport and by the lack of local services within reach in a reasonable time on foot or by public transport. The economically active without cars for the same reasons are also excluded from access to jobs.

10.  How can these problems be addressed by the Welsh Assembly Government?

See 4 above.

Reference:
(1) This is the most up to  date data available since the Welsh House Condition Survey has not been published since then by local authority and  different indicators were used in WIMD 2005 , which did not identify poor  housing conditions