Access to finance for rural start ups

Research recently published by the Commission for Rural Communities has identified a worrying problem with the lack of access to financial advice in rural areas, a particularly pertinent issue in the current economic climate. Its not the first time that this theme has reared its head, and yet there is still limited recognition of the real issues or specific services to meet the needs of rural people and their businesses.

A lack of access to finance was one of the key findings of ground-breaking entrepreneurship researcher Izzy Warren-Smith back in the mid-nineties. Her work identified that in many cases women were the driving force behind the surge in farm diversification projects for struggling rural agricultural businesses. Yet these enterprising women were coming up against significant barriers in their quest to build a sustainable business, and lack of access to finance was a big issue. Farmer's wives/daughters/sisters would go to the bank with a decent business plan, but they were more often rejected. On the back of her pioneering work, Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) was established to offer support to these women, and is now a thriving national organisation which helps women to grow and develop their rural businesses.

I recently attended the WiRE annual conference at Harper Adams Agricultural College, which was buzzing with enthusiastic women in rural business. One of the key messages which came across was the tendency for women to stereotypically be more conservative with money (when running a business, not when shopping for shoes!) which puts us in a more recession-proof position and perhaps less in need of financial advice than men in rural areas.