"Local Services for Local People": The Contribution of Rural Community Businesses to Integrated Rural Development

Rural areas across Europe face a range of problems, including declining farm incomes, ageing populations, unstable housing markets, high levels of outward migration or long distance commuting, withdrawal of basic services and difficulties faced by those without access to a car or public transport routes. The policy response at EU and national levels has been to shift from "productivist" measures that subsidise agriculture to strategies promoting "integrated rural development", emphasising the interconnections between various facets of the rural economy. Thus farm modernisation, training, and product processing and marketing are linked together with promotion of a more diverse economic base centred around tourism and recreation and the maintenance and development of services for local residents. An essential element of this model is its reliance on collaborative actions involving a range of community or civil society actors at local level. This paper examines the extent to which the development of community-owned businesses in rural parts of the Yorkshire and Humber region in the UK corresponds to these ideals of integrated rural development. Evidence is presented on their geographic footprint in terms of direct economic impacts, as well as on their linkages with existing social, community and institutional networks. This allows an assessment to be made of the extent to which such enterprises contribute to wider rural economic development. The analysis is set in the context of regional development policy within Yorkshire and the Humber, and highlights the issues involved in fostering the economic health of diverse rural environments in a region dominated by pressing urban problems. The evidence also underlines the tensions that exist between those that perceive community businesses from a rural development perspective and those that see them as a means of combating poverty and exclusion (and hence as part of the social economy).