Rural life: it's perfect for bankers

Meet the new English "countryman". He is as likely to be in insurance or banking as in farming; he worries far less about income, world problems and relationships than his urban counterpart, is probably over 45, and his views are more likely to beinfluenced by his family than the media or advertising.

Moreover, he spends almost half his income on his mortgage and is likely to have moved to the countryside in the past 20 years. He probably works in a small business, his children may be expected to move to the city, but he can be expected tolive 18 months longer than his urban counterpart.

A report by the government's countryside agency on the state of the countryside, collating and interpreting rural 2001 census figures for the first time, throws up the kind of statistics which both undermine and confirm old attitudes to people living in the countryside.

Any lingering notions of the countryside being full of ill-educated bumpkins should be consigned to history. Rural adults and teenagers have higher levels of educational attainment than their equivalents in urban areas, according to the report.

"Overall there are rising standards in the countryside. On average, people in rural areas are more likely to have an NVQ Level 3 or above than their urban counterparts, and young adults are less likely than urban residents to be without formal qualifications," says the report.

But it notes that one in 14 countryside pupils leaves education with no qualifications, and that there may be pockets of educational disadvantage and wide regional variations.

"The report shows that life in the countryside is generally good for many people _ but too often problems lie behind the overall favourable picture. One in four people living in low income households are in rural areas and housing continues to become less affordable, particularly for first time buyers," said the countryside agency's chairman, Sir Ewan Cameron.

Family influence


In a surprising finding, the report says that 49% of people living in the English countryside get their personal opinions about life in Britain today mainly from their families, far more than in urban centres and, especially, London, where only 38% say that they are mainly influenced by family. Friends shape the opinions of those in the countryside more than television, and only 2% said that advertising campaigns or community leaders had a significant effect on what they think. While health and employment are more or less equal concerns, people in the countryside worry far less about crime, discrimination and world issues than people in urban areas.

The report underlines the fact that life in the countryside has less than ever to do with farmers. At the last count, out of 14 million people living in rural areas in England, only 174,000 of them were in full time agricultural work, 0.3% ofthe population. However, while farming lost 33,000 full time jobs from 1998-2001, it gained 10,000 part-timers, and there are now 150,000 occasional farmers and labourers in England.

The role of farming needs to be put into perspective, suggests the report. Its share of the English economy is now only 0.8% and far more people (91,787) lost manufacturing jobs in the countryside than farming jobs in the past three years. Rural areas have diversified their economies and 87,000 more people work in country hotels and restaurants than in 1998. The figures cannot be fully broken down, but it is probable that more people now work in finance industries in the countryside than in full-time farming.

Rural England, says the report, has been heavily repopulated in the past 20 years, but the move out of cities is thought to be slowing. Since 1981, England's rural population has grown by more than 12%, or roughly 1.5 million people. In the same period, the urban population grew by 813,000, or 2.4%. England also has a landscape of increasingly older people. Some 45% of people in the countryside are now over 45, compared with 37% in urban areas. Half of all pensioners live outside urban areas.

Meanwhile, the countryside is being used more and more for the recreation of people in urban areas. The report suggests that 70% of visitors to Britain's national parks are over 35. However, these are practically all-white zones, with 3% of visitors non-white. Almost half of all visitors went to the Lake or Peak districts.

Day trip tourism is now an essential for rural areas, says the report, and is thought to be worth almost £9bn annually, about £2bn more than agriculture.

The report also tries to quantify how much agriculture costs the economy. Environmental benefits are estimated to be approximately £600m a year but damage is costed at between £1bn and £1.5bn. Soil damage, flooding and the cost of removing nitrate fertilisers from drinking water are all linked to bad farming practices.

But in many areas, life in the countryside is increasingly like life in urban areas. Median incomes are similar, although 5% of rural English wards had average income levels of less than £20,000, compared with 14% in urban wards.

House prices, too, are now broadly similar to urban areas. However, average earnings are slightly lower in rural areas than urban areas and have grown at a slower rate in the past few years, according to the report. Remote rural districts, it says, have the highest proportion of working age adults receiving in-work tax credits.

More than 90% of people polled for the report thought it was important that the English countryside is "kept the way it is now".

However, this conflicted with other findings: while 23% thought it important to keep the landscape and to stop development, only 17% of people thought farms and farmers were important.

"The report paints a picture of a countryside which is only good in parts and increasingly mainly for the better-off. It is becoming ever more difficult for the less-well-off to live and work in the countryside - and this in particular could be very bad news for the upkeep of the land itself," said Richard Burge, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance.

"But it confirms that one of the great strengths of rural communities is that they still think and act as communities."