YOUNG farmers in Cumbria are being priced out of living in the countryside and staying in agriculture due to a shortage of affordable homes, according to a new report.

House prices in rural England have more than doubled during the past decade to average £256,698, but the average salary for people working in the countryside has risen to just £21,000.

The National Housing Federation, the NFU and the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs said the high cost of housing meant the vast majority of people in rural areas had little hope of ever being able to afford to buy a property where they lived, and the issue posed a threat to traditional rural life.

Cumbria YFC chairman Steven Dixon, of Selside, said he was the only young farmer in the Selside, Whinfell and Shap areas who had chosen farming as a career.

“That’s a heck of a big area to cover. There is a real shortage of housing for farmers who need to live around the land they look after. To get somewhere to live, people are having to move into towns and cities and often they don’t come back into farming.

“They have a house and they get different jobs close to where they live, which are better paid, so they don’t come back. My two brothers and sister all have different jobs because of these problems.”

YFC member Andrew Long, of Ulverston, has just got on the property ladder after years of trying, but has had to sacrifice location for an affordable cost, meaning he is on the other side of town from where the family farm he works on is located.

He said: “It is not easy at all, especially in rural areas. It has taken a lot of doing to get a house but I am on the other side of the town. The closest house to the farm is £150,000 and for a first time buyer that’s just impossible. This was the only thing I could afford.”

Mr Long believes second homes in the countryside are partly to blame for the problem.

“I don’t think it’s fair for people to have holiday homes in the rural countryside. It is making it a ghost town and stopping young farmers from living on the land which they work on.”

The NHF estimates that nearly 100,000 new affordable homes need to be built in rural areas during the coming 10 years to meet demand and it is calling on local housing authorities to draw up action plans to address the issue.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said: "Unless we build more affordable homes for the local families who sustain and enrich village life, then we must accept that traditional community life will be wiped out within a generation in many areas.”