The home front

Yet, while aesthetics draw in tourists to the great national parks and so forth, it does nothing to add to the incomes of farmers, or assist those agricultural workers looking for homes by the land that they tend.

As such, it is welcome that the Government has acknowledged the concerns of the respected Country Land and Business Association, paving the way for redundant buildings to be converted, sensitively, into new homes.

However, the CLA also makes a valid point when it says that it may be more cost-effective to build new houses from scratch rather than upgrade ramshackle buildings that are not connected to the water or electricity mains.

It is a concern that goes to the heart of rural policy-making: what more can be done to provide affordable housing for those people who continue to give their life to the countryside, and whose toil contributes so much?