The Importance of Community Anchors for the Future of Rural Areas

Rural schools have a vital role as community anchors

The launch of a campaign in recent weeks for improved resources for secondary schools in the northwest of Scotland highlights the range of issues confronting those trying to maintain quality services in sparsely populated areas and the sustainability of rural communities. Faced with a combination of depopulation, inaccessible housing, poor public transport and limited digital connectivity, maintaining thriving local communities becomes an ever-increasing challenge.

These factors are familiar in rural areas across Scotland, the UK and elsewhere. Whilst there are fine examples of successful local projects which address these issues, (I have already written about some of these in earlier posts on Policies for Places) nevertheless, it seems fair to say that government and planning authorities have yet to find adequate holistic strategies to secure rural communities more generally. Their difficulties are compounded by ever decreasing resources available to local authorities from central government.

Rurality

One of the central challenges for the development of such a strategy arises from the very diversity of rural communities. In Scotland, the Scottish Government has an 8-fold urban rural classification based on two main factors -population and accessibility as measured by drive time to an urban settlement.  The definitions of the 8 categories in the Scottish Urban Rural Classification is set out below.

The Scottish Government core definition of rurality classifies areas with a population of less than 3000 as rural. These rural areas are further categorized (in categories 6-8 in the table above) according to their drivetimes to settlements of 10,000 or more. A further classification has been introduced very recently relating to Island areas recognizing that there are special factors influencing accessibility for many island communities.

The map of the 8-fold classification of urban and rural areas in Scotland is shown below.

Each of the 4 countries within the UK has its own definition of rurality justified against the different geographies and settlement patterns in each. The classification in England for example classifies areas as rural if they have a population of less than 10,000. These differences emphasize the importance of a wider regional context for understanding rurality. It can be seen from the map just how rural Scotland is.

This approach is essentially structural, but In addition to concepts of rurality defined on the basis of population and accessibility, recent work is developing an approach based on functionality. This approach considers rural areas in terms of both ‘stocks’ (structural characteristics) and ‘flows’ ((dynamic features).  It concentrates on information about population and activities including socio-economic characteristics, employment, housing, demography, environmental and recreational variables, and variables related to changes and trends.

The research literature collectively seems unable to settle on a particular typology of rurality, and has come to embraces a long list of variables which can be included, and which could be the basis for policy action if the objective of policy is to maintain viable and thriving communities in rural areas. Policy has to address has to address both structural and functional elements. and take into account relevant dynamic aspects driving social and economic change.  This represents a real challenge for government agencies in the development and delivery of relevant and effective policies which are responsive to the diversity of rural communities and sensitive to community aspirations.

Community Anchors

Central and local government policies for sustaining rural communities need to work with the supports and caring arrangements that are already in place. In most places there is an active community sector made up of informal activity which sits under the radar of local authorities and other public agencies. Alongside this informal network there will usually be a number of more formally constituted voluntary organisations with specific remits to run a particular service or project.

There is now growing evidence to support the view that those communities most resilient in responding to the challenges they face also have an organization, ( or sometimes more working in collaboration)  which is owned and controlled by local people.  These organisations may often offer a degree of local leadership and represent the interests of their community to external stakeholders and public or private service providers. They may own community assets such as buildings and land and generate their own local income. Such organisations are often referred to as community anchors. It would seem that policies which support and sustain these organisations should be an important feature of policies seeking to sustain and re-vitalize communities.

The concept of anchor institutions is familiar in discussions of policy approaches to urban renewal. Studies to identify anchor institutions in urban areas show that they take many forms but are commonly further and higher education institutes, hospitals, major local business operations, sports stadiums and retail parks. These so-called ‘eds and meds’ institutional anchors seek to leverage economic and social development in their areas.

In urban areas these large anchor institutions can be contrasted with community anchors discussed above. Community anchors are place specific multi-purpose organisations which are a driving force for community support and renewal. Community anchors are usually community-led but are not confined to the community or voluntary sectors, and can also be in part of public and private sector provision.

Community anchors can provide a wide range of services, for example health, care, education, transport, leisure activities and retail to local residents. They may have experience and resources which can be shared with others to work across organizational and service boundaries and can invest in local facilities and support community groups. Apart from the direct benefits stemming from such service provision they can offer employment opportunities, skills training and volunteering opportunities for local people, and help the community to articulate its views about their community needs and represent their views to public authorities.

Community anchors in rural areas

Community anchors tend to be discussed in the context of urban areas where they can work with relatively large populations and are themselves relatively large organisations, influential in re-imagining service provision and providing resources for community development For rural settings as categorized earlier with smaller and more scattered populations and some distance from urban centres it is important to look at the transferability of the concept of the community anchor.

Community Anchors on the scale of those found in urban areas are unlikely to be found in rural settings. More likely is that in a rural context local institutions can ‘scaffold together’ as McAreavey  puts it, to create an anchor network rather than rely on a single organization. Co-existence and co-operation are key components of such a network which can collectively provide a range of resources and is not reliant on a single provider. An empirical study of the resilience of rural communities in England shows how place specific community anchors can enhance rural resilience.  The study suggests that the extent to which communities can move beyond mere survival seems to be limited in places without community anchors.

The policy response

Similarly to urban areas, change in rural areas is influenced by long-term issues such as economic restructuring, developing technologies and environmental pressures, and government policies on the level and distribution of public spending. Policies for the sustainability and vitality of rural areas must take these into account.

Against a background in which Scotland’s total population is projected to start to decline from 2033 and there is already a growing imbalance in the distribution of the population across the country as more rural council areas are facing population decline whilst other urban authorities continue to grow, the Scottish Government has just published its Action Plan for addressing rural depopulation. The plan sets out its strategy for supporting people in rural and island areas to live, work and bring up their families in those areas.

The plan sets out an ambition to achieve a ‘sustainable distribution of our population in a way that works with the characteristics of our places and local ambitions for change’, and to reflect ‘action which can be taken from community to national level in order to best support communities to thrive’. The Plan will be overseen by a Ministerial Population Taskforce.

The initial phase of the strategy includes modest funding for local research, local initiatives, and for community settlement officers in authorities severely affected by rural depopulation. The Action Plan contains a long list of action commitments relating to infrastructure and public services, intended to ensure including existing programmes for housing provision, health care, transport and connectivity are effectively accessed and delivered in rural situations.

There is a long-standing interest in building community empowerment in Scottish Government policy-making, most notably with the Community Empowerment Act of 2015 and from the Christie Commission before that. Both look to partnerships and community participation as the basis for service re-form. The Action Plan looks to support community wealth building, land ownership, crofting and community trusts as well as programmes for services. I could not find any explicit reference to support for community anchors but the Action Plan expects specific place-based programmes to be community-led.

Rural schools as community anchors

In this policy environment I will go back to where I started in this essay. Small rural schools are often characterized as being at the heart of their communities and having a value to their communities beyond simply the educational. The added value can include:

-          They are a focal point for residents, their presence enhancing a sense of community identity;

-          They provide a space for community members to come together, to form social links, to host extracurricular activities and build social capital;

-          They contribute to economic development through employment of teachers, administrative staff and support staff;

-          They can provide a venue for community events, workshops and programmes that contribute to the local economy;

-          They can provide a forum for articulating local developments necessary for the sustainability of the locality and represent these views to wider public authorities.

In so doing they are performing the crucial role of community anchors. Strengthening local bonds, enhancing local identity, contributing to the well-being of residents and to the wider aspirations of the community reflect the actions of community anchors described in earlier sections of this essay.

Rural communities, especially those in categories 6 - 8 in the Scottish Urban-Rural Classification are unlikely to have many other facilities than their schools and maybe village halls around which community anchors might grow. A community is likely to be crucial in articulating highly localized service design, economic opportunities and social developments.  Alongside shorter term issues, suitable strategies and investment for the long-term development of community anchors is critical for the future of these communities to help stem depopulation and provide a sense of purpose. Rural schools are in a good place to contribute skills and spaces to underpin such strategies.

Further reading

You may be interested to read other pieces on rural areas in Policies for Places:

The Place Principle and Place-based Policy

Applying the 15-minute city concept in rural areas - does it make any sense?

References

McAreavey, M (2022), Finding Rural Community Resilience: understanding the role of anchor institutions, Journal of Rural Studies, vol 26, pps227-236