WIREDGOV

We have updated our 10 Big Numbers (some of which remain unchanged) which continues our State of the Countryside work by bringing together a set of statistics covering a range of factors affecting fundamental aspects of living and working in rural areas.

These statistics can be regularly updated and are based on robust and widely understood data sources.
In addition to national tables associated with the 10 Big Numbers, for the first time we provide regional tables for the vast majority of the statistics.

This document is available as a download only.

We have also made available the regional analysis for some topic areas:

9.8 million people lived in rural England in 2008.

Net internal migration to predominantly rural areas was 64,800 in 2007/08.

In 2009 808,600 rural households live more than 2 km from a Post Office.

In 2008, the full-time weekly wage for a workplace was £404 in predominantly rural areas.

The average rural house cost 6.8 times the average annual rural household income in 2007.

Approximately 700,000 rural households lived below the poverty line in 2007/08.

743,000 rural households lived in fuel poverty in 2007.

499,000 businesses in predominantly rural areas were registered for VAT in 2007.

In predominantly rural areas, between 2001 and 2008 the number of people aged over 60 rose by 506,700.

There were 93,000 second homes in predominantly rural areas in 2008.

Our State of the Countryside programme provides the first port of call for rural statistics and analysis. We work together with data providers, a wide range of other bodies that analyse similar data and policy-makers to produce agreed statistics which can be tracked as a baseline year-on-year.

State of the Countryside is an important part of helping us provide well-informed, independent advice to government and others and ensure that policies reflect the real needs of people living and working in rural England, with a particular focus on tackling social disadvantage and economic under-performance.

Our next full State of the Countryside report is due to be published in the summer of 2010. In addition to the reports, we also produce a number of focused State of the Countryside Updates − which look at a specific issue or dataset from a rural perspective