As Scotland edges closer to another Holyrood election, familiar battlegrounds dominate political debate: public services, the economy, housing and inequality. Yet once again, there is a risk that rural Scotland will be spoken about warmly but overlooked in policy.
That omission matters. Rural poverty is real, persistent and structural. It is also too often hidden from view.
Headline employment statistics can give a misleadingly optimistic picture. In Dumfries & Galloway and The Scottish Borders, employment rates are close to, and in some cases above, the Scottish average. But as the CSJ Foundation report Voices from the Margins shows, this masks a deeper reality of low pay, insecure and seasonal work, with underemployment and limited career progression.
The data is clear. Median hourly wages in both areas are among the very lowest in Scotland, and 13 per cent lower than the national average.
When these wages are combined with higher transport costs, poor tied housing with off-grid heating and limited access to services, many working households are pushed into serious financial problems. The analysis found almost a third to be living in “fuel poverty”.
But data alone cannot capture lived experience. That is why in Voices from the Margins we deliberately went beyond statistics. Through a series of local “Wee Listen” events of small, trusted conversations, we listened to more than 30 grassroots charities and community organisations. The result was a report that got closer to the realities faced by families across the South of Scotland.
What emerged was both sobering and consistent.
As one frontline charity worker told us during a Wee Listen session, families are increasingly being forced into impossible choices: “people in rural Scotland are choosing between heating and eating – and you can’t eat grass!”. Fuel poverty was repeatedly identified not just as a cost issue, but as a driver of poor health, anxiety and isolation, particularly in winter months when the heating oil prices spike.
Transport came up again and again as a “poverty multiplier”. Sparse badly linked bus networks, high fares and long journey times make it harder to access work, education, and healthcare. Participants described young people travelling hours each day to reach college or training and families struggling to attend medical appointments without a car.
Crucially, the Wee Listens also exposed the gap between how rural poverty is measured and how it is lived. The official statistics in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) often underestimate the scale of hardship because deprivation is dispersed rather than concentrated in a postcode. As our report notes, communities can fall below the radar of national decision-making based on SIMD despite experiencing entrenched disadvantage.
Yet this is not a story of failure alone.
Alongside the challenges, Voices from the Margins also documents the strength, creativity and commitment of local charities and community anchor organisations. These groups are often the last line of defence, responding flexibly at low cost to need, spotting problems early and building trust where statutory systems struggle to reach.
From community-led housing and digital inclusion projects to integrated family support and employability programmes, the report identifies practical solutions that are already working. The problem is not a lack of ideas. It is a lack of coordination, long-term funding and a political focus.
As parties now compete for votes, there is a clear prize on offer.
Rural Scotland does not need more pilots or short-term fixes. It needs a renewed commitment to “rural proofing” across government, serious investment in housing, transport and connectivity, and stronger partnerships between the Scottish Government, local authorities and philanthropy.
Get this right and the next Holyrood Parliament could be remembered as the one that stopped treating rural Scotland as a problem and started treating it as a place of possibility. Because when rural communities thrive, Scotland thrives.
Kenneth Ferguson is Head of Scotland at the CSJ Foundation