'Villages doomed unless we supply good jobs to occupy young people'

VILLAGES across Somerset risk "dying" if more cannot be done to provide local jobs for young people, a local councillor has warned.

- DANIEL MUMBY Local democracy journalist

Somerset Council recently published its economic prosperity strategy, which lays out a broad vision for how new jobs and investment will be attracted to the county

Liberal Democrat councillor Matt Martin (who represents the rural King Alfred division) has openly criticised the strategy, accusing the council of "aiming low" and not doing enough to attract high-quality, well-paid jobs to the area.

Without these, he warned, Somerset's villages would die out amid the growing exodus of young people to London and other cities, pointing to recent trends on the continent.

Mr Martin - who lives in the small village of Westhay, between Glastonbury and Highbridge - made his feeling abundantly clear when the council's climate and place scrutiny committee met in Taunton on April 28.

He said: "My problem with young people in Somerset is that they are going away - and the reason for that is largely people like me. I came down from the south east, brought my south east money [with me] and bought a house that no one else could afford to buy in the local area.

"Now, curiously enough, I couldn't afford to buy it - the house prices in Meare and Westhay have gone up because of gentrification, not that we've got money coming in from everywhere else apart from Somerset.

"We're seeing in Somerset now the problem that they've seen in Italy, Spain and France for the last 15 years - and that is villages dying. In France, you can buy villages - not houses in villages, you can buy villages, because people like me have gone there and bought the houses up, raising the price of houses. The young people, not being able to buy, have all left and the old people have died.