Should we build 15 new homes in every village?

The need for affordable housing in rural areas is something every party agrees on.

Schools, pubs and shops are closing in villages and younger people are being forced to move out because they cannot buy a home in the place they grew up.

A study from English Rural, a not-for-profit housing association with homes in 140 villages, including in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire, found the average rural house price was about 16 times average rural earnings.

One idea discussed at a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference in Birmingham was for every village to build at least 10 to 15 new homes.

The Conservative group leader on Wiltshire council, Richard Clewer, said it would enable affordable housing to be built without overwhelming villages.

"If every settlement, every parish sees some growth, in some as few as 10 to 15 houses, it meets a chunk of housing demand nationally," he said.

"It makes villages more sustainable and viable and, even if it's uncomfortable for some, it's not huge, it will rapidly blend in."

The idea was featured in Wiltshire's local plan, which was scrapped in May because it did not allocate enough land for housing.

The National Planning Policy Framework dictates any development of 10 homes or more, or sites of 0.5 hectares or larger, must include affordable homes.

This can mean shared ownership, rent-to-buy, or key worker housing.

English Rural's chief executive Martin Collett said: "Rural communities have not had the attention they deserve for decades and they've withered because governments, of all parties, have focused on big numbers.

"But small scale development can have a big impact in these areas.

"The cumulative impact of 10 to 15 homes per village is transformational on a national scale in meeting housing need and keeping villages alive, with pubs, schools and shops."

One of those attending the fringe discussion was Virginia Edwyn-Jones, deputy mayor on Shaftesbury town council, who believes the area desperately needs the right kind of homes to be built.

"If you're only earning £15,000 a year, you're not going to be able to afford what's classed as affordable," she said.

"Eighty percent of the economy in North Dorset is agricultural, youngsters have no stepping stone to leave home."

But she also said developers needed to be pushed harder to deliver employment space when building new homes.

"Our two industrial estates are full to the brim, there is nowhere else to work locally," she said.

"If everyone moving into new homes is commuting to Bournemouth, they're spending their money out of the local area."

In a Conservative document published at the party conference, called The Right Way, one of the five changes the party is promising is to make Britain "a place investors want to back".

As part of that, a new Conservative economic unit has been set up to look at problems with infrastructure and the planning system.

Meanwhile, the Labour government published a Future for Rural England report in July, recognising housing delivery was insufficient in rural areas.

It promised strategic authorities, like Hampshire and the Solent Combined Count Authority, would carry out reviews of housing need and be given powers to acquire land and develop it for housing.

It also said reforms to planning systems were under way to encourage smaller and medium scale developments, including on rural exception sites.

These are small plots of land on the edge of small villages, those with less than 3,000 homes, that are not permitted to be developed, except for affordable housing.

People who can rent or buy normally have a local connection, either because they live there, have a family member locally or work in the area.