In Britain, unlike in many other countries, there is a general impression that poverty is a largely urban phenomenon, associated with inner cities, difficult to let housing estates or ex-industrial areas. Rural areas are imagined as picturesque, idyllic and far removed from such hardship and deprivation. Perhaps for this reason, poverty and vulnerability in rural Britain are neglected both by research and by policy and practice. Yet analysis of the British Household Panel Survey shows 50 per cent of rural households experienced poverty at some time between 1991 and 2008, compared with 54 per cent in urban Britain (Vera-Toscano et al, 2020). Poverty is clearly a rural phenomenon too but, as Newby recognised (1980, 278):

Addressing financial hardship among the 11.3 million inhabitants of rural Britain (ONS, 2016) is hampered by an inadequate evidence base, according to two House of Lords Select Committees, a Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Group and the Welsh Senedd. Analysis by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (2018) revealed that 54 per cent of rural dwellers were financially vulnerable (compared with 48 per cent of urban residents) but not how or why. Levels of financial stress are known to be high, with fewer than half of those in the Highlands and Western Isles ‘coping well or very well financially’ (Scottish Household Survey, 2012), and there is widespread fuel poverty in rural areas (Scottish Government, 2018b; DEFRA, 2021). Despite this knowledge, research and policy focus overwhelmingly on urban experiences of hardship and ‘austerity urbanism’ (Peck, 2012).

These issues are important now because poverty and vulnerability have been increasing again, in all areas, exacerbated further by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside falling real incomes, rising debt, welfare reform, Universal Credit and Brexit uncertainties, pre-pandemic research revealed a marked acceleration in the loss of services and population decline in sparse areas (Wilson and Copus, 2018) and a more widespread loss of rural services in England (Rural England CIC, 2022).