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Townies' exodus to countryside
SEASIDE resorts, such as Scarborough and rural parts of Yorkshire and the Humber, are emerging as hot destinations for people leaving towns and cities to make a new life in the countryside.
And families are replacing the retired as the biggest group leaving urban areas to settle in the region's countryside, despite a continued decline in services and a rise in rural poverty.
This is one of the pictures to emerge from the State of the Countryside 2008 report, published by the Commission for Rural Communities. (CRC)
The report, the 10th annual analysis of life for people living and working in the English countryside, reveals that wages in some sections of rural Yorkshire continue to be low, and for many work is not a secure route out of poverty.
Dr Stuart Burgess, chairman of the CRC, said: "Around one in five rural households now live below the poverty line and between 2004/05 and 2006/07 poverty in rural households has increased faster than in urban areas."
The report highlights a number of other challenges, including a lack of affordable housing, declining services in rural areas and poorer accessibility to services for people without cars.
For example, in rural Yorkshire only 67.2 per cent of householders live within 4km of a bank or building society, compared with 99.7 per cent in urban areas, the proportion living within 4km of an GP surgery is 89 per cent (100 per cent in urban areas), just 69.7 per cent live within 4km of an NHS dentist compared with 100 per cent in urban sites, 67.6 per cent live within 4km of a secondary school (compared with 99.3 per cent) and 72.5 per cent within 4km of a supermarket (100 per cent in urban areas).
Nationally, rural areas also lag behind their urban counterparts in the field of communications technology.
While internet usage in the countryside has risen from 44 per cent in 2002 to 62 per cent in 2007, particularly for accessing services, the availability of high-speed broadband remains low in sparsely populated areas.
The changing face of business in the countryside highlights a continued decline in the number of people working in agriculture. Yet it demonstrates inherent strengths in rural economies, with a higher rate of start-ups than urban areas and overall growth in the number of businesses, compared to a net decline in the urban business base.
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Weather for Scarborough
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: North east
