Taylor Review calls for live/work programme

Matthew Taylor MP’s review, which is published today, recommends a range of measures to promote live/work and home based employment.

It explicitly urges RDAs and regional planning bodies to ‘support the further development of both rural enterprise hubs and live/work units'.

It says that an exemplar programme should be set up in one or more regions to test bed the practical issues relating to live/work units in rural areas, adopting a recommendation in a recent Live/Work Network report, Tomorrow's Property Today.  It also says councils should incorporate policy supporting home-based working in their local development framework.

The report backs pro-live/work advice in draft Planning Policy Statement 4 and says councils should be further encouraged to collect data on home workers to inform business support services.

And it urges the government to support the ‘growing opportunities home-based working can provide for economic participation by affordable housing tenants'. It adds that the National Housing Federation should promote tenancy agreements that do not prohibit home-based working amongst its tenants.

Amongst other recommendations, the Taylor Review backs PPS4’s recognition that not all development in rural areas should be accessible by public transport and urges that this should feed into local and regional plans. And it says that there needs to be a move away from excessively inflexible policies to safeguard employment space - a view outlined by economist Kate Barker at Live/Work Network's spring conference.

The review says that home-based business growth should be supported in order to nurture the rural economy. It highlights figures showing that a higher proportion of rural dwellers work at home than urban residents. Just over one in six (17%) of rural working residents work from home, more than double the level in urban areas (8%).

Tim Dwelly, director of Live/Work Network, which advised the review, commented: 'We strongly welcome Matthew Taylor's call for an exemplar live/work programme and will shortly be publishing our own proposals on what the programme could deliver.

'The Review throws welcome light on the true nature of the modern economy in rural areas - with the growing trend towards home based businesses that do not require commuting.

'Few realise that the government's own figures show 41% of all UK businesses are now home based [DTI survey 2005]. This means that in modern Britain, home is now the place where enterprise begins - and in many cases continue and flourish. Given the strength of the trend towards combined workspace and home, we think it is self evident that more needs to be done to encourage well designed live/work schemes. Live/work can help such businesses professionalise their premises, collaborate and expand.

'We also welcome the review's call for enterprise hubs. These can encourage otherwise isolated home based businesses to collaborate and network together. Live/work developments provide ideal opportunities to finance such hubs.' 

Dwelly added: 'Although this was a rural review, we believe that home based business and live/work are also essential to the development of a low carbon economy in urban areas. Most of the review's live/work proposals should apply across the board.' 

Matthew Taylor, Liberal Democrat MP for Truro was commissioned to carry out the review by prime minister Gordon Brown last year. Taylor was tasked with examining the role that live/work could play in developing the rural economy.

Tim Dwelly was author of a 2002 report for the Housing Corporation: Disconnected - social housing tenants and the home working revolution. This called for social housing tenancy agreements to drop rules barring businesses being run from the home, a key recommendation in today's Taylor Review. Download Disconnected.

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