28%of the survey sample. The area where confidence was lowest among survey respondents is looking for work or applying for jobs online, at 26% – this represents a key concern for job seekers in rural areas as the Covid-19 pandemic has only increased the degree to which finding and applying for jobs is conducted online. • Older people, the unemployed and those on low incomes are more likely to have trouble doing things online than the overall sample. • Older people rely more on friends and family for help with the internet. While 22%of respondents agree that they rely on friends and family for help with the internet, this rises to 43% among respondents aged 65 and over; 45% for unemployed respondents; and 40% for those who are disabled or a carer. So how can we address these issues and seek to engage rural residents who are in digital poverty or are at greater risk of digital poverty? Our research highlights a set of measures that should be drawn on in designing interventions in order to drive meaningful improvements in access to digital services: • Taking a hyper-local approach and understanding the local context and the range of available services is vital; • Peer-to-peer interventions can usefully address local variation in access within a place, and help reach individuals and communities who would face barriers to engaging with other initiatives; • Initiatives aimed at addressing digital poverty should be based on specific life stage requirements and transitions, and the types of digital needs they call for; • Programmes and interventions must speak to the particular nature of tasks that people struggle with and the problems with digital engagement that they need to overcome, rather than being exclusively tabled as efforts to make someone ‘digitally included rather than excluded’. We outline a set of recommendations across two briefings produced, for regional and national policy-makers. These include: • The UK Government Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Department for Work and Pensions should work together to raise awareness of social tariffs as available to Universal Credit claimants, with plans for a joint campaign to be set out in the forthcoming Digital Strategy 2022; • Partnerships between local authorities, the third and private sectors, should undertake educational outreach through peer- to-peer approaches to boost confidence; • Social value within large connectivity partnerships should be leveraged to drive support and outreach. The UK Government’s Levelling Up Agenda provides a strong imperative to address digital poverty, at both a regional and national level. For too long, many rural communities have faced economic and social decline due to a range of factors, such as unaffordable housing or a lack of work opportunities, resulting in young people moving away to fulfil their career and life aspirations. Addressing digital poverty in rural communities has the potential to help rural areas thrive as attractive propositions for businesses, with all of the attendant benefits that new enterprises provide for local areas. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 31 TrinleyWalker is a Policy Advisor with the Work Foundation. He is the author of the Digital Poverty Transformation: Accessing Digital Services in Rural NorthWest Communities Regional Policy Briefing and National Policy Briefing. t.walker9@lancaster.ac.uk
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