Helping Businesses Thrive in Peripheral Rural Towns

This is a report about business-led growth and its role within place-based revival. The report explores these issues by considering peripheral rural towns which are defined here as small towns distant rather than accessible to large urban areas. The towns considered within this report are between 2,000 and 12,000 in population. This research aims to investigate whether businesses can thrive in peripheral rural towns and, if so, the conditions needed for businesses to thrive in these locations. Whilst there has been much research into the potential for growth in rural areas, there has been a lack of focus on specific places and the challenges they face. Many studies have considered rural or sub-sectors of rural such as peripheral rural as generic categories whose economic prospects are assessed with little consideration of the outcomes within specific contexts. The opportunities arising will vary considerably between specific places and depend on a range of specific factors which would be difficult to assess or judge generically from national statistics. See more