Rural Communities and Digital Exclusion

In this episode, we delve into the often-overlooked issue of digital exclusion in rural areas. Despite the rapid advancement of technology, many rural communities still need access to reliable internet services, leading to a digital divide that not only affects their social interactions but also hinders economic growth and educational opportunities. Join us as we explore the root causes of this digital disparity, its consequences, and potential solutions. Listen in to understand how we can bridge the gap and ensure that everyone, regardless of their geographical location, has equal access to the digital world.


Kerry Booth
Kerry is the Chief Executive of the Rural Services Network.  She has been working with the Rural Service Network for almost ten years, honing her skills in representing rural service providers at a strategic level.  Kerry is a highly motivated, strategic thinker with excellent communication skills who is able to interact with a range of audiences in an engaging and persuasive manner. She has a successful track record of working in a political environment and an excellent understanding of the challenges facing organisations delivering services in rural communities.

Prior to joining the RSN, Kerry worked for almost a decade in Local Government, where she was part of the National Graduate Development Programme. She completed her Postgraduate Diploma in Local Government Management at Warwick Business School. She then held a number of positions in a rural local authority, with the last five years spent leading a joint Policy, Performance, and Improvement Team across two shared rural local authorities. 

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Transcript

0:05

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Social Footprint. My name is Jasneet and today I'm joined with Kerry Booth from the Rural Services Network. So. Hi, Kerry it's great to have you on today's episode to discuss all things digital inclusion in rural communities. That's brilliant. Thank you very much for having me. So if you'd just like to give our listeners a bit of a background of the Rural Services Network and maybe yourself as well. Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Kerry Booth. I'm the Chief Executive of the Rural Services Network. We are a membership organisation representing those in rural areas, and we aim to provide that national voice to our rural communities. So in membership, we have a whole range of organisations, primarily local authorities based in England, from Cornwall all the way up to Northumberland. But then we know that councils don't deliver services in isolation. So we have a range of other organisations. So rural housing associations, health trusts, smaller charities, national bodies, all that interest in delivering services. So we deliver services to our membership. But we also represent them on a national stage. So for example, we have an all party parliamentary group on rural services where we share information with MPs to make sure they're well informed about the issues that rural communities are experiencing. Oh, wow. That's amazing. So in terms of kind of exclusion being multifaceted, then you probably see the whole array, you know, of the exclusion spectrum in terms of not just digital exclusion, but you know, other forms of inclusion as well, which is fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. because and I think some of the difficulty we have in England is that our rural communities, they're not all based in one nice, nice, neat area they spread across the country. So we see pockets of deprivation across the country, in our rural communities, that sometimes get left behind then because they're not it's not in a nice big urban area where you can target interventions and policy. Actually, it might mean we need to do something in the southwest, something in the northeast. And so sometimes those communities then suffer more exclusion because of their geography and the way that things are in terms of government policy. So they can be then more excluded. In terms of digital exclusion, I think there's two elements here for our rural communities. So there are those that are digitally excluded due to having perhaps a lack of skills and a lack of knowledge about how to use connectivity and devices. And then there are those that are excluded because simply there isn't mobile phone signal or there isn't broadband connection to where they live or to where they work. So there's two elements of it that I think we need to be perhaps discussing and tackling in terms of solutions moving forward for for the government, especially in an election year this year. Your gosh, yes, definitely. So it's you know, it's really interesting to hear obviously the dual-natured element of digital exclusion. I mean, that's a huge beast to tackle because like you said, it's it's the infrastructure element. and then obviously the skills element, which is a lot more personal. and the outreach is really important to get the skills to the people who need it. but in terms of digital exclusion kind of being rife, you know, still a problem that's very apparent in rural communities, what are kind of kind of the stats and the figures around it then, and kind of how many people are affected, what does it mean for their livelihoods or their lives, their education? Could you provide a bit of clarity on that? I can try, yeah, absolutely. There are all sorts of different figures that you can look at with this. Yeah. So in fact, I went to a presentation this week by the Digital Poverty Alliance. They had some figures saying that those in rural areas, 7% don't have access to the internet at home, 11% don't own a smartphone, and 20% don't have what they call foundational skills. and being able to use the internet, mobile phone, whether that's something as simple as making a video call to a family member, whether it's ordering shopping, you know that actually there are people in other communities who don't have those skills. If you're talking about actual connectivity, there's around 12% of rural properties unable to access superfast broadband compared to 2% in urban. So I think the difficulty is with this, when we look at figures across the country, we may be able to claim, oh, 92% of our country’s got access to high speed connections, but actually those that don't are generally located in our rural communities. And it may be villages, it may be pockets of villages, so it becomes harder to be able to connect them. We know that that approach up to now has been around using the market to do that, and to install fibre to premises. And now the government is starting to tackle those harder to reach areas to make sure that services reach them. But we haven't got there yet, and there's quite a way to go for some of those rural communities, and it will be quite costly to do that. So we know why they've been left till last. But it means that then they are at a disadvantage by not having that connectivity. I mean, when I think so, I have three children where I would say the average family, when I think about what we use connectivity for in our home, it touches nearly every aspect of our lives. So I've got two children at secondary school. All of their homework is through different apps online. I put money on their school dinner account online. I order their supply. You know, I do my weekly food shop online. I renew my car insurance online. If I need to go to the doctor's, I now have to fill in an online form and then they will call me back. So it touches every aspect of our lives, being able to have that connectivity. And for those then that don't, it leaves you out a huge advantage. So that's just in my in my family life, you know, my children would be disadvantaged if they weren't able to do their homework online at home. I'm lucky, and I hope it stands up today that I can do video calls at home. But lots of people can't. Lots of people can't work from home. We know that the rural economy is less productive than the national average. So, and wages earned in rural areas are lower than the national average. So we have a real issue around the economy as well, and making sure that our businesses in rural areas are able to access that connectivity, you know, to grow their businesses, to develop, to reach different markets. There's all sorts of challenges there. You know, we know we have an aging population in our rural communities, and it is our older people generally who are have less of those digital skills. So we need to make sure that they aren't isolated and left behind from accessing services, particularly in the area of health care. You know, to fill in a form online to get the doctor to then call you back. Not everybody feels comfortable doing that. So we need to make sure that we still have, whilst I’d like digital skills to improve, we need to make sure that for those that aren't comfortable with that and don't have those skills and aren't likely to get those skills, actually, we need to make sure there are other ways that they can still access services. You know, we talk the government talks a lot about digital by default. Nearly everything they want us to do is online, which is great. But there will be some people for which that is more difficult. So we still need to make sure that they can pick up a phone and talk to somebody, or they can see somebody face to face, because that might be the way that makes them feel most comfortable to do so, and the way that they're able to do so. You know, we don't want to create a nation of people where those that are most vulnerable are almost excluded from living the life that the rest of us lead in terms of accessing services online. No. That's true. I mean, you know, technology is a great thing, but as it advances, it is definitely leaving huge demographics of people behind. Obviously, like you said, the aging population who don't have the skills as well as people in rural communities because of the lack of infrastructure and skills. and, you know, to my knowledge, you know, the the you have your all party parliamentary group, which are hopefully, you know, kind of rallying the way to making the government do a bit more to help those people. But at the same time, you've kind of got government policy and also corporate policy, which is kind of removing, for example, terrestrial TV kind of radio signals and transferring it to online content and streaming. So, you know, what's what's the impact there as well? I mean, like you said, it permeates across education and kind of people's working life, the economy of rural communities. You know, how how do you see it evolving? Because it in my opinion, that's that's going the wrong way, you know, making everything online and excluding those people. It's it's not there's no improvement there or progress. What's your thoughts. Absolutely. And I think there's some people for whom, if they're perhaps more elderly or they live alone, having the radio on all day is what keeps them feeling connected to people. And they may not have facilities to have that through broadband, you know, streaming devices. So being able to continue to have those services are really important so that those more vulnerable people don't get left behind. I just think that whilst there are so many benefits to digital connectivity and being able to do things like this, also for some people, being able to see someone being able to leave their home, actually going somewhere, whether they go to the local post office, having that conversation, it might be the only person that they see in a day. And that contact is really important. And so we see in a rural communities on our rural high streets where where banks are leaving, for example, the high street, because they say, well, you can do banking online. It takes away the fact that, like I say, for that person, that might be their only interaction when they go out and they'll bump into some of their friends or see people they know. And we're at risk of if we take away all of the banks, we take away our post offices and all of those services that we access. you can access online. You know, I think there are knock on consequences of what the impact will be on people who lose that contact and that ability to get out and socialise. We already know, for example, that, you know, our social care system is creaking at the seams. It's really expensive. The system that we have currently in the way that we provide it. But actually sometimes I think by maintaining some of that face to face contact or those places for people to go, ultimately that might reduce what we're spending on social care support because people are having those interactions that being slightly active, they're seeing people. So whilst I am supportive, totally of improved connectivity, I think we also need a place in our society for you to be able to go in and speak to somebody in the bank about something that you need to do in relation to banking or, you know, to visit the post office and have those conversations and interactions rather than just all sat at home behind a screen. Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, it's something that we've discussed a little bit as well on a previous episode on our Digital First Approach episode, where it's not just coercing or forcing people into just adopting digital, it's having that human connection as well. So and I guess that's so important in rural areas where there is just that obvious or, you know, inevitable isolation, you know, geographically, which can also stem into kind of social exclusion as well as obviously, the digital exclusion. But I mean digital exclusion, again, it's so broad. You've said the infrastructure elements, you've said the skills elements. we could probably talk a lot about, you know, the repercussions of those things. And you know what what is created by that disparity, the digital disparity. But could you probably shed some light on the solutions to that maybe? So things that businesses could do. I mean it's off it's off topic from kind of this, but I know that BT have kind of taken the onus of of bringing electric vehicle chargers into kind of larger and more rural communities by converting, like old broadband units into electric charging vehicles. So again, that's something that's coming from a corporate kind of private organisation as opposed to the government. So, you know, maybe businesses, entrepreneurs listening to to this episode today, what may be can they do to help alleviate these challenges in rural. I don’t know if I’ve got all the solutions for that. I think, so we do a lot of work campaigning to get government to take action. Our emphasis has been on saying, you know, actually, we don't want a one size fits all approach from government. We want them to look at the needs of our rural communities and find solutions to suit. So particularly around digital connectivity, we know you need a different solution than an urban centre, where actually the the market will fulfill that. It will be connected due to the amount of people there that will then take up that service. So the government has a couple of programmes it's looking at. So it has Project Gigabit and it has the Shared Rural Network. So Project Gigabit is aimed at improving broadband connectivity across the country to areas where it isn't at the moment. And Shared Rural Network. That's 1 billion pounds worth investment aimed at improving the mobile telephone network across the country. So that because there are communities where you may have no connectivity or you may only have connectivity from one provider. Now the difficulty with that is you can't shop around, you can't look for the best deal. You might be on a lower income. You're living in a remote community, potentially with poor public transport, you know, accessing work, all of those things are difficult. And then you can't even say, well, I'm going to go for the best deal. And it might be whoever it is this week or this month, because you can only get signal from one provider where you live. So rural residents are also disadvantaged by that in not always having access, you know, full access to the market that others in urban areas may or be able to take advantage of that. So that Shared Rural Network is aimed at improving the connectivity across the networks in our rural communities. And that's 1 billion pounds worth of investment. So the government recognise that this is important. The mobile phone companies, it's a joint project, they’re also working to deliver that. The difficulty is at the moment it's stalling in certain areas. Some of it is stalling due to delays in planning permissions to put up the masts. And some of that comes from those local authorities not having the capacity to be able to manage all of those. So we do a lot of work around campaigning for fair funding for local authorities in rural areas. So historic successive governments have underfunded rural councils. So we're at a stage now where this year urban councils will receive 36% more in government funded spending power per head than rural councils. You know, that's significant, then, in terms of what services those councils can deliver to their residents, how much capacity they have. So when they're getting in all those planning applications that need, processing, you know, around the masts and having the expertise and the knowledge to understand how that works, actually, some of them are finding that more difficult. And it seems odd that we're in a case now. I've been in roundtable discussions in the House of Parliament on this, where they’re saying “we know we've got this backlog, how do we clear this, because we need to deliver this 1 million pound, 1 billion pound project”, sorry. But actually some of those are “but we need more capacity in our planning departments”, you know. So for a small investment, we could enable that billion pound investment which would bring so many benefits to our rural communities. So I think if the government really wants to prioritise improved digital connectivity in our rural communities, you know, there are some things that they can do to unblock that process. But I think, as well as the I guess the hardware and the equipment, it is around those digital skills. We need to make sure that those rural residents aren't left behind. And I guess in that there's different categories. So there will be perhaps older people or people who just don't have those skills at the moment. They might need a different approach to how do we help this small business grow and develop its product and its placement online? And, you know, I've heard of schemes where some rural communities, they're using secondary school children, the sixth formers, who are working with older people in the library to show them, well, this is how you call your grandchild, you know, this is how you do a FaceTime call. This is how you look at the bus timetable online. You know, those small steps of things that they may like to do to try and have some of that knowledge transfer, but then it may be that we need the government to look at, right, we know that in rural areas the economy is mainly made up of small businesses, sole traders. We need to put in a programme of support to ensure that they have access to the right digital skills, whether that's website building, selling online, accessing different markets. So I think there may be some different solutions for the different groups of people who maybe lack some of those skills. And for the economy, I think it's really important that, you know, productivity in rural areas is lower, actually, by increasing that productivity, everybody benefits. You know, the country's doing better economically. Wages are then increased. And I just think that there are benefits to the whole country of supporting our rural areas to not be left behind in this process. Okay. Like you said, it's definitely a domino effect once one thing gets going right, you know, it affects the education of the area, the economy of the area. You know, it improves, it improves quality of life for people. So definitely that multiplier effect of, you know, promoting digital inclusion. I mean, you know, from my perspective, you know, We Are Group, we have digital skills training. And for us community is a big thing. So it's like outreach. It's it's going into the community giving them their preferred channel of choice, whether it's, you know, yeah, being in person, like you said, with the students in person, teaching them, you know, digital skills over the phone, if that's a preferred, you know, method if people can't travel. but I know also with like the coalition government of recent years or previous years as well, there's been a reduction in those kind of community centres where that in-person contact can happen. So, you know, I'm not too familiar what rural communities are like in terms of like the the presence of libraries or just, yeah, like community hubs and spaces. So is that something that might need to be changed, kind of bringing forth that element of community again, for in-person contact? Yeah. So I mean, we've seen a reduction in some of those services around, particularly around youth services in rural areas. So when, when the councils have their, you know, that I imagine this is a big bag of gold that they've got, they've got a big bag of gold of what they're going to deliver, you know, spend their budget that year. Rural councils have a much smaller bag of gold. It's never a bag of gold. But you know what I mean. Rural councils have a much smaller amount of money. So their first call on their service is around those statutory services, so things like social care. What that means is they have less money to spend on discretionary services. And discretionary services are not just the nice to haves. So it's not just, do I have the takeaway on a Saturday night? You know, it's things like public transport. It's things like having a digital champion to enable the improved hardware connectivity to enable those digital skills. So last year, urban councils budgeted to spend double that of rural councils on discretionary services. So rural is at a disadvantage and having less to spend on those things which will help the community. So we are seeing closures of libraries in rural areas. We are seeing reduced youth services. We're seeing a lack of public transport in some rural areas where a bus may come on a Tuesday and not come back until a Thursday. You know, it's no use to get anywhere to access those services. So there is that impact. But actually by creating some kind of community hubs, you know, if it is the library that stays there, because actually you could have benefited by the time on a Tuesday to help people with benefit application forms. And on a Thursday you could have somebody there delivering website creation skills for those local businesses in that area. And on a Wednesday, it's something for young people after school, you know, having that central facility and it might not be somebody there every day to do each service, but it might be once a week, once every two weeks. It means that it makes a huge difference for that community in terms of their their wellbeing, their access to services, their access just to take part in and all of the things that lots of people might do for granted, take for granted. Because, you know, if you live in a rural community with poor public transport and you want to apply for a new job, but you need to do some training. If you don't have connectivity, often courses are online, you know, the place you would go is the library perhaps. So if you don't have a library or somewhere to go to, to do that training course, to make the application. I mean, most job applications are online, it's not handwritten CVs anymore. You know, it's so it's really important the role that places that like libraries play in our more sparsely populated areas because of the other things they can do, as well as being a place to go and have books. It's all of the other services and that access to the digital world, and skills and training, which then sort of opens the doors to everything that you can do in life. Yeah, definitely. Again, it's that whole thing isn't it's not just digital exclusion exclusively. It's it's all interlinked and interconnected. So then that's really interesting. so I guess in terms of we've talked a bit about skills there in terms of the hubs being a good place, you know, to enable that. What about kind of the infrastructure then like what would or what do you or the Rural Services Network say needs to be improved to help benefit people in terms of digital inclusion, is there anything that the government or companies can do to help get them the connectivity they need? Or, or is there kind of an, like a minimum standard that should be made available for people in rural communities? So it does mean that they, you know, can do things online. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, our first thing is, well the government has these big programmes you know, billions of pounds worth investment. Let's make that happen. Let's find out what's delaying the Shared Rural Network and move those barriers out of the way so that that improved mobile phone connectivity can be there, particularly when we know there are things like the switch over of the telephone lines. So people will need to have a connection in their homes that isn't through the old analogue lines. So improved mobile phone connectivity helps that because there is a back up when you have a power cut, which we know happens more often in rural areas. So for us it would be to just get on and deliver those programmes and there is work taking place, don't get me wrong, but I find it difficult when the government says things like, well, by 2030 we will have improved connectivity. You know, by 2030 my children will have left home. If I didn't have connectivity now, actually, that would put their whole, you know, secondary school education and learning at a disadvantage. So for those rural people who don't have that access now, you know, that's quite a long time away. So I think for us it would be for government to take action. And also just to think rural. So when they're writing policy, don't just have a one size fits all approach, but look at what solutions do we need in rural areas. Because actually if there's poor digital connectivity and lower wages and higher council tax and poor public transport, and there's no libraries and there's no high streets with banks on or post offices, how do those people access all of the services that they need to? And actually, we know that, you know, there are all sorts of different solutions. So there are some communities coming together and banding together to improve the broadband in their area, going out then to say, right, you know, we've got the market of our village hinterland and we need it. Let's do that as a collective. But also we know there are solutions that might help in other areas. So transport is an issue. Public transport in rural areas. So areas where there isn't a regular bus, actually a solution for that might be something that's called demand responsive transport. So the way that this can work is that you go onto an app, you say you need to go somewhere. It's a bit like ring and ride. They'll look at where the nearest minibus is and direct that to you. It's all great, but all these things rely on an app and that mobile phone connection, which if you don't then have that, it's harder to implement some of those solutions. So it might actually save in other areas by saying with improved connectivity, that actually enables those people to access that ring and ride bus to get to work, to get to a hospital appointment rather than not being able to do so. So I think digital connectivity is such an enabler for all of our, you know, the people in our country to access services, but particularly for those who may not have other ways of doing things. So they don't have that library, they don't have public transport or a bus to get to the hospital. You know, there are ways that they can find that and improve that by having improved connectivity. It's sort of underpins everything that we need to do now. That's a good a good phrase actually about yeah, digital connectivity underpins everything we do because it's true. That's yeah, that's the life we live nowadays relying on technology and and it's just a shame people are being left behind still. I mean to my knowledge, there's the, minimum digital living standard, which is kind of a project in play. There's loads of interesting statistics that have been released. So I think it's something like 4 in 10 households with children don't have kind of that minimal digital living standard. And obviously we're hoping that it will inform government policy and hopefully, yeah, bring action now rather than yes by 2030. So I think they've done research into families with children around the digital minimum. I'm never going to get the words in the right order, the minimum digital living standards. So they've done research into, the minimum digital living standards for, for families with children. And in fact, my colleague has been talking to them this week saying, well, have you got those figures for rural areas and how could we explore that? So I think they also are looking at, you know, there’s figures for older people and those standards. And so we know we have an aging population in rural areas. So that will impact them greatly. But it would be good to have that kind of rural breakdown of what that is, because then you know how to target a solution. Often we find with government, if they don't actually measure the right things, it's hard then to see whether what they're doing is having an impact. So we need to know about what's happening in our rural communities, what what skills to people have. Because if there's a particular sector that's struggling, then we know where to target the solution. There's no point targeting at everyone, because that might not be the best resources. We need to know, is it just our aging population, rural areas, and how do we help them? Is it just our small businesses? How do we help them in a targeted way that will improve their situation? For me, I think, we're at quite a critical time with the election. Whether it's going to be July or later on in the autumn. 40% of constituencies are rural. So for us, you know, rural is out there up for grabs. And we'd like all of the political parties to be listening to rural communities, understanding their needs, understanding some of these complexities of how the transport, the expensive housing, the lower wages, all of that impacts on those communities. So that one whoever gets into power then has some policies to meet those needs. So we put together a Winning the Rural Vote campaign, which has a number of asks for government in key policy areas that, you know, we've been sending to all of the political parties saying, you know, it's really important that you listen to rural because that one size fits all approach, you know, that's then to the detriment of everybody because those rural areas are being left behind. Particularly when we talk about young people and access to education, you know, we're limiting their life chances in terms of what they can do if they don't have access to the right, you know, everything from their homework in year 7 up to research they're doing for A-levels and beyond to university. We need to make sure that our young people have access to connectivity and technology, to be able to inform and educate themselves in terms of progressing on. Yeah, well, gosh, it's the it's just great to hear that, you know, yourself Kerry as well as the Rural Services Network, are really giving that voice to rural communities. And hopefully it will inform, you know, future government decisions. Again, it is a question mark of whether who will be in power. But yeah, it's something that I could talk about a lot with yourself. I mean, it's really interesting to hear, and I really hope our listeners have gained a lot in terms of the difficulties, you know, the gaps that exist within rural communities and hopefully some solutions or kind of, you know, some steps forward to helping those people. but yeah, unless there's something else you'd like to say, it'd be a great place to wrap up. although. Yeah, we'd love to hear more from you. I think from us. I think from us. The important thing is whoever is going to be in power this year, we would just like them to recognise our rural communities, that they have different needs in terms of policy solutions. And once you understand that, it's easier to find the right policy solutions and target it at those areas most in need, because we don't want our rural communities to be left behind, which is what there is potentially happening at the moment. Yeah. Oh well, that's a lovely sentiment to end on. And it's so true. but yeah, thank you so much, Kerry for joining us on Social Footprint.