In this edition, health worker shortages, fluvial erosion driven perhaps by climate change, the impact of tourists, falling house prices, rail chaos and finally a Roman sauna in Rutland…

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Brexit has worsened shortage of NHS doctors, analysis shows

Our research has indicated that the biggest challenge facing rural health and care is workforce so read through a rural lens this is a very depressing read. It tells us:

Brexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals.

The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians.

Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank which it has shared with the Guardian.

In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/27/brexit-worsened-shortage-nhs-doctors-eu

Ruskin’s ‘loveliest’ view under threat in Kirkby Lonsdale

Climate change and rural areas… another prosaic but deep seated example of the challenges we face. This article tells us:

An unspoiled, spirit-enhancing countryside view celebrated by the 19th-century critic and poet John Ruskin as one of the most beautiful in the world is under threat unless £1m can be raised.

It was after a visit in 1875 that Ruskin described the view over the River Lune from the churchyard of St Mary’s in Kirkby Lonsdale as “one of the loveliest in England, therefore in the world”.

He wrote: “Whatever moorland hill, and sweet river, and English forest foliage can be seen at their best is gathered there. And chiefly seen from the steep bank which falls to the stream side from the upper part of the town itself … I do not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy, a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession of true ‘Holy Land’.”

The view was painted by JMW Turner in 1822 but it was already famous, with the poet William Wordsworth describing it as a place not to be missed in his 1810 Guide to the Lakes. It is the reason why many tourists visit the small Cumbrian market town, but if they do so today they will come across a locked gate.

The issue, according to Mike Burchnall, the chair of the town council, is that the footpath is on an embankment and when the Lune below is high it cuts into the bank. Work was done in the mid-1980s to try to reinforce the bank but a lot of that was washed away during Storm Desmond in 2015, “and we’ve had big storms ever since then so the whole bank is eroded”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/25/ruskins-loveliest-view-of-kirkby-lonsdale-under-threat

‘People are living in vans’: Porthmadog considers vexed issue of second homes

I know this is in Wales but the issues raised here are equally valid in parts of rural England and as the next article profiled shows in the light of house market fluctuations far less straightforward than they might appear….

“It is beautiful,” said Craig ab Iago, Gwynedd council’s cabinet member for housing. “But there is an emergency here, a massive wave of a problem. It’s out of control.”

That emergency is the number of homeless people, which has increased in Gwynedd by 47% in the past two years. “It’s hidden. You don’t see people sleeping rough,” said Ab Iago. “But people are sleeping on sofas, in hotels, in bed and breakfasts, in vans. It’s immoral that some people have a second home here while others don’t have one.”

Gwynedd council’s Plaid Cymru-controlled cabinet this week voted for council tax premiums to be raised to 150% next year and the £3m raised be used to tackle homelessness. The full council, which is controlled by Plaid Cymru, will make a final decision next week.

Council tax premiums on second homes in Gwynedd are currently set at 100% and the discussion has tended to focus on whether this is having any impact on the housing sales market. The rationale for introducing the premium is to free up homes for local people, to stop the hollowing out of communities, which affects the viability of the Welsh language.

But the council is now arguing that another vital issue is the impact the number of second homes is having on the rental sector. People who cannot afford to buy are renting, so the number of properties available is shrinking and homeless figures are soaring.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/25/homelessness-porthmadog-wales-council-second-homes

UK homeowners forced to settle for below asking price, Zoopla says

Is this a short term blip in the relentless growth of house prices or does it presage an inflation driven longer term change? Methinks it’s the latter, until we significantly increase the stock of housing the scales will always be tilted in favour of the house owner….

People selling their homes have typically had to settle for below the asking price in recent weeks, according to Zoopla, which is predicting house prices will fall by about 5% next year.

The average price achieved in recent weeks has been 3% below a seller’s asking price, when for much of 2021 and the first half of this year it matched the asking price, the property website said. Zoopla said it expects discounts to increase further in 2023.

Since the start of September, one in nine homes have had their original asking price reduced by 5% or more, Zoopla said, and a quarter have had the price cut to some degree, according to the index covering the month of October.

Asking price reductions are greatest in southern England, where sales volumes have fallen the most, with almost one in three homes in the south-east and east of England reducing asking prices to attract demand, the report said.

Annual house price growth slowed to 7.8% last month, down from 8.1% in September and the lowest since November 2021, according to Zoopla data. Demand has fallen 44% since September’s disastrous mini-budget, which drove mortgage rates sharply higher and led to hundreds of deals being pulled from the market.

New sales have dropped by up to 50% in previous hotspots and areas where higher mortgage rates will hit buying power hardest – in southern England, east Midlands and Wales. Sales have fallen less in more affordable areas and in London where market conditions have been weaker. Zoopla expects mortgage rates to fall to about 5% at the turn of the year, from about 6% now for two-year and five-year fixed deals.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/nov/28/uk-homeowners-forced-to-settle-for-below-asking-price-zoopla-says

North of England faces rail chaos, warns business lobby

The chaos in the rail industry really is impacting on the lives of rural residents in England and so there is much to agree with in the comments profiled in this article. I would like to see rail worker salaries clearly benchmarked against everyone else so that we can see just how deep seated the cost of living challenge they face is compared to other workers. Not because I dispute their right to strike but because we are desperately short of context to understand the relative impact of inflation on them compared say to health workers and thereby build a rounded picture of what is happening to our economy. This article tells us:

Business leaders in the north of England are warning rail services could "collapse into utter chaos" by January unless the government takes action.

Members of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership have written to ask the transport secretary to address a crisis they say is "wreaking havoc".

Rail travel in northern England has been severely disrupted in recent months by strikes and cancellations.

The government agreed the current situation was "unacceptable".

It said it was "investing billions" in northern transport and was "working closely with train operators" to resolve problems around the recruitment of new drivers.

But Juergen Maier, former chief executive of Siemens UK and a vice chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said the government had failed to "use the levers only it can pull, to sort out or train services".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63776464

And Finally

Ancient barn conversion with steam room found at Roman villa in Rutland

In the current world of deeply dysfunctional forces afflicting rural communities this article, which profiles a sauna like facility in Rutland almost 2000 years ago reminds us of in many senses just how little we have improved our circumstances over the last two millenia. It tells us:

If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

Fresh evidence of the villa owners’ lavish lifestyle comes two years after a family found fragments of ancient pottery on a ramble through farmland in Rutland. Archaeologists from the University of Leicestershire, in partnership with Historic England and Rutland county council, later unearthed a rare mosaic depicting Homer’s Iliad.

The finding – now protected by the government – was described as “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/28/ancient-barn-conversion-with-steam-room-found-at-roman-villa-in-rutland