Living in sparsely-populated Cumbria comes with many benefits. We are surrounded by lakes and fells and do not have to suffer the traffic congestion and ‘business’ of big city life.

However, there are also several downsides to living in a predominantly rural part of the country.

Although Cumbria was one of the first counties to switch from analogue to digital television, viewers without satellite TV do not have the same choice of channels as people in many other parts of Britain.

Mobile reception and wi-fi can be patchy and broadband speeds rarely match up to places like Leeds, Birmingham or London.

Full credit, therefore, to the ‘can-do’ folk in the Fell End area of Cumbria between Sedbergh and Kirkby Stephen, who have banded together in a ‘self-dig’ scheme to provide high-speed broadband for their remote part of the county.

They will soon be able to access speeds of up to 330Mbps after residents and businesses helped pay for a stretch of fibre broadband linking 58 premises.

It is that kind of community spirit and effort which helps ensure local people and firms do not lag too far behind their counterparts in more developed parts of the country.

Residents in another rural area, Torver, face a different challenge. Around 50 per cent of homes in the village are holiday lets and second homes, which means that, particularly in winter, it can appear empty of life.

On the plus side, nine new homes have just been given planning approval, including two for affordable rent and four for affordable sale for ‘local’ people. That should go some way to maintaining the sustainability of the community.

However, it would seem more and more schemes of this nature are going to be needed in the future to try to meet the massive demand from local people wanting to get a foothold on the property ladder unless some concrete legislation can be introduced to put a limit on the proportion of holiday and second homes in Lakeland villages.