There is little research about how small firms in rural areas manage crises and how they recover. The National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE), co-led by the Centre for Rural Economy, is launching a survey to explore how rural businesses have respondend to COVID-19.

Rural resilience has received relatively little attention. Over the next two months NICRE is speaking to more than 4,000 rural and farm businesses in the North East, South West and Midlands to find out more about the strategies they have put in place during the pandemic to increase their resilience and their plans and expectations for the future.

Whilst every business in the UK has been challenged in some way over the last year due to COVID-19, those in rural areas have been some of the hardest hit. NICRE co-director Prof Stephen Roper, from the Enterprise Research Centre at Warwick University is leading the survey: “Our large-scale survey fills an important gap in our current knowledge of rural enterprise and aims to improve how local and national government support rural businesses in the future.”

Alongside resilience, the survey will explore how firms’ local networks have contributed to survival and growth, the impact of financial pressures on businesses, families and communities as well as issues around workforce, the availability of broadband, and aspects of local supply chains. The survey will also seek the views of a comparator sample of urban firms with owners contacted at random by independent market research agency OMB Research. Results of the surveys will be available in the autumn.

NICRE, which was established to foster rural enterprise and unlock the potential in rural economies, is also keen to speak businesses in more detail. Prof Roper said: “We would be very interested to talk in-depth to the owners of rural and farming firms about how you and your business have coped during the pandemic, the challenges you have faced, and what you think about the support you have received from Government and local agencies.

“We’d really like to hear your views to help us shed light on rural resilience and contribute, through NICRE, to developing future policy support for businesses in rural areas.”

Any business interested in giving their views should contact Prof Roper at Stephen.Roper@wbs.ac.uk

For more information about NICRE email nicre@newcastle.ac.uk or follow @NICRErural on Twitter.