COMMUNITY leaders are calling for urgent measures to tackle the lack of West Somerset affordable housing after latest figures show that South West property prices have rocketed by 20 per cent - the country’s biggest house-price rise since 2019.

The average cost of a West Somerset property has risen from £294,000 in 2019 to £353,852 in the past year, according to estate agents Rightmove - a 20 per cent rise, compared with 14 per cent in London and seven per cent in the north east.

“People on low or average wages cannot afford to live here so it is increasingly difficult to recruit the staff that we need to run our services and businesses,” said West Somerset Community Land Trust secretary, Hester Watson.

She added: “House prices are going up faster than in other places and even if they do fall a bit this will not fix the problem which is getting worse. On local wages people cannot afford to buy property or rent from private landlords which means they cannot live here.

“The Government is ignoring the urgency of the situation and doing nothing to provide the housing that we need. Allowing developers to build large numbers of high-cost homes is not the answer and the result will be an increase in the number of people needing services that cannot be provided”, said Ms Watson.

“Landlords are replacing long-term lets with holiday homes and many houses are now second homes, left empty much of the time.

“The small number of available social homes will house very few of the people seeking adequate housing which is suitable for their needs.”

At a recent meeting, the trust urged local councils to declare a housing crisis in West Somerset after it was claimed that health, social care and education services were unable to recruit key workers because they couldn’t find housing they could afford.

“This is having profound consequences,” said trust chair Margaret Smith. She added that the high price of housing meant that people were moving out of the area, contributing to the break-up of communities and support networks.

High house prices, rising mortgage rates, rapidly increasing essential living costs and political turmoil have led to low confidence in the property market, according to a report this week from the property website Zoopla.

It adds “Over the longer term, it tends to all work out fine because, given the lack of housing supply in the UK, the long-term direction of prices will still be upwards.

“For now, it's difficult to predict which areas of the UK will likely see property prices slump the most. It could be that the areas that saw the fastest growth during the pandemic, predominantly areas outside of London, are the ones that are hit hardest.”