THE cost of housing has undermined the structure of the countryside, a place of work as well as pleasure. So much so that family farms which provide the chocolate box image of the countryside that every one likes can no longer exist.

Part of the problem, according to David Price, assistant regional director of the CLA in the West Midlands, is that young people have nowhere to live in rural areas where houses are too expensive and dominated by retired people.

They also see a better way of life, with more income and more to offer in urban areas, but he said when the young moved away there was no-one to work on the family farms resulting in large-scale agri-businesses taking over on a complex of share farming, contract farming and tenancy arrangements achieving economies of scale and producing food for a global market.

Mr Price said one of the solutions for family farms lay with less restrictive planning and the allowance of small, sympathetic housing schemes, including affordable housing, in every village, before it was too late.

"The better way is for a change in the planning guidance to allow redundant farm buildings to be treated as brownfield sites and for the allowance of exception sites within and around villages to provide the much needed housing for the workforce of the countryside," Mr Price said.

"The main opposition comes from the very people who perhaps share the view that the beautiful countryside happened by chance and must not change. They probably live in the executive homes which once were cottages housing the rural workforce and they object simply on principle, in order to retain the status quo, to any further development.

"But the countryside is a workplace and a living place, farms as well as a host of other rural businesses are becoming starved of a viable workforce."