The PLACE/Ladywell is a high-profile local response to the homelessness crisis in London, an architect-designed project with business spaces and 24 well-proportioned homes for homeless/insecurely housed families in the London Borough of Lewisham. The scheme, which opened to residents in 2016, is planned and built as a temporary modular structure, fully demountable, which can be moved across 'meanwhile' sites, over a total lifespan of around 60 years. The scheme addresses three aspects of the housing problem: the need for good quality temporary housing to house families while the older social housing schemes are regenerated; raising the profile and readiness of derelict sites awaiting long-term development; and experimenting with new methods of housing development and provision and developing the capacity of the modular construction industry in line with government policy. The scheme has found instant popularity with media and policy-makers, in spite of its incapacity to mitigate Lewisham's homelessness, or provide tenants the reassurance of permanent housing. It is being replicated both within the borough and across London, partly funded by London's regional authority. This paper explores the extent to which a scheme such as PLACE/Ladywell measures up as a locality-sensitive and responsive intervention addressing spatial injustices and the needs of homeless families. It examines whether the project constitutes a pioneering niche-innovation for construction and planning, or a publicly funded experiment in the production of urban space and rent on marginal sites.

This paper explores the redistribution and rescaling of societal risk in rural Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic, as one episode of the permacrisis. Drawing on empirical work in three contrasting areas of Scotland and England, we analyse individuals' experiences of risk and of the institutions which offer them support in times of crisis (markets, state, voluntary and community organisations, and family and friends). Our findings reveal the unequal distribution of societal risk during the pandemic, exacerbated by a legacy of precariatisation and individualisation in the labour market and welfare reforms. Although the state acted to mitigate risk and financial hardship during the lockdown, it was often voluntary and community organisations that filled the gaps left by the inability of the state to reach effectively into rural areas. Social infrastructure and institutional capital are therefore central to the mitigation of vulnerability and societal risk. This raises important questions about the capacity of institutions to provide support in times of crisis to rural citizens. Unless there is societal pooling of risk through such institutions to ensure social protection and that nobody is disadvantaged by where they live, future episodes of the permacrisis are likely to exacerbate inequalities and vulnerabilities in rural communities.

A rural-urban poverty gap exists in most countries around the world, and this paper employs a novel approach to explain this difference, using logistic regression to examine the effects of rural-urban residence type, individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics, and changes in government policies on the likelihood of being poor in England. Unusually, rural areas in England have lower poverty rates than urban areas, so the direction of the typical rural-urban poverty gap is reversed, but the method employed here would be applicable in either direction. We disaggregate micro-data from the Understanding Society Survey (USS) into three residence types (predominantly rural; significantly rural and predominantly urban), and combine these USS data with information on changes in councils' spending power, in service spending and in per capita income lost from cuts to welfare benefits since 2010. The results demonstrate that rural residence provides a buffer against poverty in England, a so-called 'rural advantage effect', but this is reduced or becomes non-significant after controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics and changes in government policies. Furthermore, working-age poverty has increased more rapidly in rural areas than urban between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis also reveals how national policies have differential spatial impacts on local populations according to their diverse characteristics.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a brief outline of the RELOCAL project's concepts, methods, and their application. The chapter thus complements discussion presented in Chapter 2 regarding RELOCAL's 'localities approach' and elaborates on the normative foundations of the project. The chapter is structured into two sections. The first section outlines the conceptual framework of the RELOCAL project by introducing the two key concepts of spatial justice and locality, the relationship between them, and the research methodology that was used in the RELOCAL project. The second section explains how this conceptual framework was applied during the course of the research, and how it was used in work packages. An extended discussion of the project's concepts and a full list of references are provided for the interested reader.

This chapter offers some closing reflections on the original contributions of this study to the understanding of poverty and social exclusion in rural Britain and on implications for policy and practice. It begins by reflecting on the main themes emerging from this study and highlights some of the new insights which have emerged. After reviewing previous studies’ suggestions for policy interventions, this chapter argues for an approach which combines person-based and place-based policy approaches to social exclusion in rural areas. Some of the most pressing policy challenges are then highlighted, including the cost of living crisis and the rural blindness of the UK welfare system, and practical opportunities for policy development to address these are proposed. The chapter ends by reflecting on issues of power and governance, and on the extent to which the framing of rural communities as self-reliant and resilient might facilitate the withdrawal of the state from rural areas and the abdication of its duty to rural citizens.

East Perthshire is an accessible rural area, mostly within commuting distance of Perth, Dundee and the central belt. It includes expensive middle-class housing as well as some of the 20 per cent most deprived communities in Scotland. In-work poverty was rising, with the growth of insecure employment or self-employment making it hard to budget or save. This precarity in labour markets was exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, by increasing precarity in state welfare systems. The complexity and high risks of the benefit system were major factors in financial vulnerability and hardship, and this chapter details these deficiencies and their relation to rurality. Support came instead from numerous voluntary and community organisations. From foodbanks to advice services, from women’s refuges to care providers, these provided a ‘first port of call’ and a crucial signposting role towards other sources of help. They all face challenges of trying to provide services across a large rural area in the context of funding pressures and rising demand and need. Support also came for some from family and friends networks, especially in substituting for the state’s social care, childcare and eldercare services.