ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the various groups in the countryside which compete with each other for the stock of rural housing. Owner-occupiers whose main influences are perhaps in the improvement and gentrification of rural housing, they subsequently ally with group in preserving the countryside against development by involvement with local politics and pressure groups. The review of the main competitive groups for rural housing has necessarily been built up in an incremental fashion. Comprehensiveness of content is the first objective of any classification of rural housing. The relative importance of the main socio-economic variables within each individual profile allows a deeper understanding of the national rural housing system than the isolated indicators of tenurial structure, social class or basic amenities. The rural economy of uplands of the north and west of England, where farms are smaller and where agricultural labour is more frequently represented by the farmer and his family, is reflected in the housing structure.
