Our rural partners

Rural Housing Alliance

The National Housing Federation Rural Housing Alliance supports our members that own and manage homes in rural areas.

The Alliance helps to provide a single, clear and collective voice for housing associations’ lobbying and influencing on rural housing. Additionally, it enables housing associations to compare and learn from each other’s work in areas such as design and sustainability.

The group has quarterly meetings, and meets regularly with representatives from the Homes England and the Rural Communities Policy Unit at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 

The Alliance is chaired by Ursula Bennion, Chief Executive, Trent and Dove Housing.

The Rural Housing Alliance pledge 

The Alliance has published a rural housing pledge, Affordable homes for local people. 

This pledge states the commitment of housing associations to work with local people in order to ensure high quality homes that benefit the whole community. The Alliance works to promote this pledge to rural local authorities and parish councils.

Housing associations working in rural areas can use the pledge to show local residents and local media the values they will be working to when providing new affordable homes.

In 2021, we hosted a webinar during which the Rural Housing Alliance shared their revised pledge. They also introduced the newly published Parish Councillors’ Guide to Rural Affordable Housing, and shared examples of how they are working with parish councils and other partners to put that commitment into practice.

Rural Housing Network

The Alliance co-chairs the Rural Housing Network, together with Trevor Beattie, Chief Executive of the South Downs National Park. This group's aim is to work with Homes England to seek ways to improve the delivery of affordable rural housing. The group meets four times a year and includes representatives from across the rural sector and key government departments. 

Rural Coalition

We are also members of the Rural Coalition. The coalition comprises of a range of members who subscribe to a vision for a living and working countryside and work together to urge the government to apply a set of principles and policies to its approach to rural issues.