Many rural areas struggle to support local services, from shops and banks to public offices. Service hubs – where multiple services are co-located in the same space – can offer solutions. Service hubs can offer alternative models for providing rural services and strengthening rural-urban cohesion and connectivity. This Short Report from the Public Infrastructure and Social Services Community of Practice:

• Describes the challenges of rural service provision and access, and explores how service hubs can address these challenges
• Presents shared learning from the ROBUST project, through 9 case studies from 5 countries: Austria, Finland, Latvia, Spain and Wales
• Distils key concepts into a planning guide for service hubs