Completed

State of Rural Enterprise Survey

Overview

Our State of Rural Enterprise (SORE) Survey provided an up-to-date snapshot of rural businesses and evidence on questions of strategic and immediate interest for rural enterprise, adaptation and innovation.

It gave a comprehensive understanding of the circumstances and characteristics of business across all sectors among the regions of our three founding partners i.e. the North East, the West Midlands and the South West.

Carried out in 2021 and 2023, it surveyed 4,000 rural and urban firms with the findings published in eight reports with infographics. We've complemented our evidence with rural business insights.

Key themes

The first survey in 2021 (Reports 1-3) focused on aspects of business resilience and adaptation to both internal and external threats.

It turned a particular spotlight on the impacts of Covid-19 on rural businesses and farms in comparison to urban enterprises (providing the first accurate account of these impacts, as the economy looked to recover), as well as looking at infrastructure provision in rural areas, which emerged as a key concern for the levelling up agenda.

Overall, Covid impacted rural enterprise slightly less severely than urban businesses, although hospitality and leisure sectors were equally and significantly challenged, regardless of location.

The second survey in 2023 (Reports 4-8) focused on key themes including: staffing and labour issuescost-of-doing business pressuresenvironmental impacts and responses to the climate crisisrural growth opportunities; as well as the challenges and opportunities faced by farm businesses.

It revealed a wide range of coping strategies in response to cost pressures and evidence of greater resilience among rural firms in most sectors. It also suggested that rural enterprises were particularly responsive to greening and net zero aspects of successful business adaptation, and that farms were facing greater negative impacts in this period than they had experienced during Covid, in contrast to the pattern seen among other businesses.

Key benefits

Informs policy-makers and decision-makers at all levels, facilitating cross-departmental engagement with rural enterprise needs and opportunities.

Generates an up-to-date snapshot of rural business, providing a means to sense test new policies and support the evaluation of existing initiatives.

Provides evidence and answers to questions of strategic and immediate interest about rural businesses, whilst also highlighting specific rural enterprise challenges and solutions.

Informs a more effective identification and design of economic development policies, investment priorities and measures at national, regional and sub-regional levels, to address rural enterprise challenges, support their adaptation to wider socio-economic and environmental transitions, and realise emerging opportunities for innovation, growth and levelling up.

Research team

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