Confronting rural decline: A fight worth fighting — for all of us

RURAL decline, especially in coastal villages, is probably more apparent at this time of the year than any other. 

Holidaymakers wonder where the nice couple who ran that lovely, adventurous restaurant last summer have gone — back to London maybe? — but there’s no mystery about the restaurant. It’s closed and shuttered, fast becoming an eyesore on a street already pock-marked with more than enough failed businesses.

Like ghost housing estates — and the thousands of half-finished houses — all around the country they roar an absence, a deepening void and a change in circumstances that may be far more difficult than has been imagined to reverse or even contain.