Could mobile homes solve the housing crisis?

"Farm workers who are employed in the Stretton Hills commute 20 miles from Telford," says the campaigner, who used to advise Shropshire County Council.

"Fifty years ago such workers lived in farm cottages with a maximum rent of 6s 6d, or 32.5p a week.

"These same cottages are now home to wealthy commuters, retirees, or let as holiday cottages at £500-£3,500 per week. Most farms presently employ Eastern Europeans who live in old caravans behind farm buildings, planners turning a blind eye to them."

There is no doubt the shortage of affordable housing in rural areas such has become a political hot potato over the past few years. The Government has responded by setting councils with house-building targets, while last month the Prime Minister threatened to get tough with builders which stockpiled land to keep house prices high.

But Mr Kerswell, who was a co-opted member of Shropshire County Council in the 1970s and 80s, believes more radical solutions are needed – and says our leaders need to look to the past.

"Mobile home sites in rural areas owned by councils, not Rachman-like landlords, would be a short-term solution to the housing problem, as were prefabs after World War Two," says the 78-year-old.

He adds that a new generation of pre-fabricated homes, which have come on a long way since their heyday in the 1940s and 50s, could also have a role to play in providing affordable homes for the rural working class.

"We need council houses to rent for agricultural and other workers such as mechanics, forestry workers, pub, shop and care workers, who presently commute to remote countryside," says Mr Kerswell, who lives at Picklescott, near Church Stretton.

He does not pretend that everything was rosy in year's gone buy, recalling how in the past tenants had no security of tenure, with landlords able to give just a week's notice to leave.

But he says if action is not taken to provide low-cost housing in rural areas, then a few years from now it will be impossible to find people to fill the essential but low-paid jobs that keep the countryside functioning.

"Modern mobile homes are comfortable, well insulated and have conveniences, and are available free of charge when 10 years old," he says.

"Private site operators insist tenants buy new mobiles every 10 years, and scrap the old units that have many years of useful life left."

Instead of scrapping them, local councils could use their surplus land to provide temporary mobile home sites, or use their compulsory purchase powers buy suitable sites.

"Alternatively Chinese prefabricated houses made of steel, presently being used in Australia for workers and costing only £20,000 would provide a longer term solution," he says.

Mr Kerswell points out that the issue could become even more acute when Britain leaves the European Union, and homes are needed for indigenous farm workers to replace the present migrant workers.

"Even with robotics and bigger machines there will soon be a crisis in agriculture without skilled workers who can find better paid jobs driving machines and building sites or HGV driving," he says.

"If cheap – or free as was usually the case in the past – housing was available to rent in the countryside, then the problem would be eased. Remember that these are skilled workers not farm labourers as is often said regarding such people."

Mr Kerswell also identifies red tape as another problem in preventing new homes being built in the countryside.

"Presently, planners and all the other professional people from agents, solicitors, mortgage brokers, surveyors, health and safety and environmental officers unite to stop any real progress in rural housing," he argues. "Do we really need all these extra inputs before a brick is laid or a site cleared?"

But he warns another potential timebomb could arrive next month, with the introduction of Universal Credit which he says could plunge many farmers into poverty.

Concerns have been raised that the rules governing the benefit do not allow for complicated nature of farming. Rachel Coates, of accountancy firm Dodd & Co, says that around 30 per cent of its farming clients benefit from tax credits under the present arrangement. But the problem with Universal Credit is that it assumes that all claimants who are in work receive the National Living Wage, while the self-employed nature of farming means this is often not the case.

Mr Kerswell says this was particularly true of hill farmers, who earned an average of just £8,000 a year.

"This will result in a clearance of many small farms and other self-employed workers such as publicans, shopkeepers, care workers, hairdressers and mechanics who serve the rural communities," he says.

One of Mr Kerswell's biggest bugbears is the rise in the number of holiday cottages in the countryside, which he says have priced many young people out of the communities they have been raised in.

"The rural housing stock has been decimated by the rise in the number of holiday cottages in the countryside," he says.

"See internet for the number of holiday lets in Clun, Bishop's Castle, Shrewsbury and Church Stretton. The numbers are in the hundreds, all housing lost to local people who cannot afford to rent or buy.

"Whilst mortgage tax relief has been discontinued for buy-to-let properties for tenancies, the tax relief continues to be available for buy-to-let holiday homes. Thus there is an incentive to buy-to-let only for holiday homes, further depleting housing stocks in the countryside."