MORE than three-quarters of rural areas are less affordable for first-time buyers than the average for England, analysis by the National Housing Federation has found.

Fifty-eight per cent of rural areas have lower than average incomes.

Yet house prices in many areas are far out of line with local incomes.

The least affordable areas were the Cotswolds, Waverley, Uttlesford, Chichester and Horsham.

In Horsham, by a standard measure of affordability for first-time buyers, house prices were on average 12.5 times incomes.

In total, 69 rural local authorities, or 77 per cent, had house prices of more than the national average of 6.8 times incomes.

The problem has worsened over the last five years.

The Federation has organised Rural Housing Week (July 11-17) to bring together the major players in the rural market to find solutions to the affordable housing shortage.

Building affordable housing in rural areas would help ease the problem caused by high house prices and low wages.

Housing associations provide a range of affordable homes, including shared ownership homes which help local people onto the housing ladder with small deposits.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said: “We often hear about the housing crisis in London but many rural areas are suffering silently from seriously unaffordable housing.

“The countryside is rapidly becoming no country for young men.

“This is bad for communities and chokes off the opportunities for young people.

“Building affordable housing helps breathe new life into rural communities and gives young people the future they deserve.”

Shaun Spiers, chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: “Genuinely affordable, quality housing is vital to a living countryside but too much of rural England is fast becoming the preserve of the better off.

“Rural areas are different, which is why policy should be ‘rural proofed’.

“Rural areas have fewer affordable homes than urban areas; they tend to have lower wages and higher house prices and it is hard to build new homes in villages, often for very good reasons.

“So We need to retain the stock of rural social housing and use neighbourhood planning to identify sites for new homes that will be affordable in perpetuity.”