Rural communities face long-standing challenges, such as the out-migration of young people and geographic isolation, that affect local socioeconomic development and threaten community resilience and wellbeing. These issues are potentially exacerbated by contemporary events such as Brexit, COVID and climate change, making rural communities more vulnerable to spatial injustices and inequalities.

Across all jurisdictions of the UK, the acquisition of local assets, such as land and buildings, is promoted at a policy and public authority level as a valued means of strengthening local networks and the sense of community empowerment that contributes to resilience and wellbeing. While research has established that community assets can enhance wellbeing in rural contexts, less is known about the conditions under which processes of asset acquisition may or may not lead to increased empowerment, wellbeing, and resilience.

Our novel comparative study draws upon co-produced knowledge of policy, processes and implementation of asset acquisition. Through a comprehensive policy and administrative analysis, the collection of primary data from rural community case studies, and an approach that co-produces outcomes with communities, we seek to identify the people, systems, and structures involved, highlighting barriers and the facilitators emerging in the narrative accounts of potential pathways to acquisition across the different UK jurisdictions.

Taking an Action Research approach, the research seeks to facilitate knowledge exchange across policy, practice and community levels, and across the four UK nations, to better enable processes of asset acquisition that achieve greater resilience, empowerment and wellbeing of rural communities.

Aims and objectives

The aim of this study is to understand the impacts of the processes of community asset acquisition upon the empowerment, resilience and wellbeing of rural communities. To achieve this, the following objectives are set:

1. To explore existing sources of evidence to understand proposed links between asset acquisition and community empowerment, resilience and wellbeing in rural communities.
2. To identify existing policy and practice level structures and processes for community asset acquisition across the UK and their application in rural contexts.
3. To understand and communicate the lived experience of rural communities across the UK who are engaged with asset acquisition processes and the impacts on their community.
4. To promote shared learning and create solutions with communities, policymakers and practitioners on how to enable empowerment, resilience and wellbeing in rural communities through asset acquisition processes.

Project lead

Danielle Hutcheon

Project team

Mags Currie, Bobby Macaulay, Sarah Nason, Davide Natalini, John Hallett, Kate Hall-Wright, Richard Osterhus (all non-GCU)

Project website

Rural Assets UK research group website