WEALTHY outsiders are to be barred from buying new houses in the Yorkshire Dales in an attempt to stop offcomers pricing locals out of the housing market.

Members of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) have agreed in principle to a policy that will ensure new homes are reserved for local people and stop them being bought as second homes or holiday lets.

The policy also includes new property developments in existing buildings such as barn conversions.

The authority hopes the plan will address the disparity between average house prices in the Dales, currently over £200,000, and low wages that make it virtually impossible for locals to get a foot on the housing ladder.

Key workers moving into the area into public service jobs, such as teaching, would not be penalised by the scheme.

The policy, part of the authority's Yorkshire Dales Local Plan, received backing from government planning inspector William Carlow, who held a public inquiry into the scheme last summer.

The Yorkshire Dales is the third National Park authority in the country to implement such restrictions and in the ten years since a similar policy was implemented in the Peak District, the price of new houses is estimated to have dropped by 30 per cent.

The plan is not good news for everybody, however, and estate agents believe that it could lead to a slump in house building.

Nigel Close, of Cobble Country Property, in Sedbergh, said: "This policy, and any other grand ideas about controlling the market, will only work if monies from an outside source artificially support it. Builders will only be able to build to a cost that is profitable for them and they will build outside the area if they have a choice of working for a profit or for nothing."

"It is obvious that we do need some supported house building but it is wrong to ask individual builders or existing property owners to foot that bill after our own local government has decided to sell off all its own housing stock," he added.