Budget 2025: Rural Impact At A Glance

The Rural Services Network has put together an initial overview of the Government’s 2025 Budget, highlighting the headline measures and the early implications for rural areas across energy, transport, housing, public services, skills and local government funding.

At this stage, many Budget announcements remain broad and high-level, and further guidance will be needed to understand how they will operate in practice. Our overview therefore focuses on the immediate issues that stand out for rural communities, with fuller analysis to follow once more detail is released.

The initial assessment identifies few rural-specific commitments, with longstanding challenges remaining in areas such as fuel poverty, higher living costs, transport dependency, off-grid energy use and local authority funding pressures. Early measures, such as changes to energy bills, fuel duty, business rates and Neighbourhood Health Centres raise important questions about how effectively they will work for rural residents and rural service providers.

Ensuring that all new policies are properly rural proofed will be essential if rural communities are to benefit fairly from the measures announced.

The Budget also has implications for small and community businesses in rural areas. Plunkett UK has expressed concern that the Budget does not provide meaningful support for the rural community business sector or address inconsistencies in business rates relief, despite these enterprises playing a crucial social and economic role in rural communities. Read more here.

We will continue to monitor forthcoming policy detail and will provide further analysis as more information becomes available.

You can read our Initial Rural Impact Overview here