The Ribble Valley's one of the most desirable places to live in the North - and it's now the region's best-paid local authority area
"It was once reputed by a lady-in-waiting to the Queen that should she ever retire she wanted to retire into the Ribble Valley ," says ex-MP Nigel Evans talking about the constituency he served until this summer.
The latest Office for National Statistics data show the average median annual full-time wage in Ribble Valley is £41,874, more than big Northern cities like Manchester or Leeds and £14,000 a year more than Tameside in Greater Manchester. "But also it's a place that has real community spirit. It has some fantastic amenity, incredible schools and an amazing active community spirit that I think a lot of people respond to when they're here."
But since being elected it's become clear to him that not everyone in the Ribble Valley leads a comfortable life, with locals frequently getting in touch about housing benefits, interest and mortgage rates and the cost-of-living crisis. "So I think when we're looking at local plans I do think it's more of an exercise of actually a larger, greater area to look at what is the housing stock there, and where are we putting them, and what is the appeal to keep people in these areas where there's actually better infrastructure, and you're not putting those pressures on smaller towns."
Allan Hacking, who runs an 'old-fashioned' butcher's, says the area is the "best in the country" and that an Australian cricketer who recently stayed with him called it the 'garden of England'. Also out and about in the market are the owners of The Parkers Arms, a rural country in the nearby village of Newton-in-Boland that was last year officially named the best gastropub in the UK. Two other nearby establishments featured in the top 50.
With much of the business at her pub coming from punters travelling at least 150 miles, Stosie says the Ribble Valley has benefitted from city-dwellers visiting in the name of 'food tourism'. Not only is the Ribble Valley constituency itself now held by Labour's Maya Ellis but Keir Starmer's party also won the neighbouring seat of Pendle and Clitheroe, which took large chunks of the Ribble Valley patch in recent boundary changes.
"We haven't got an accident emergency in the constituency, but Blackburn tends to be the one that is used by residents here, and people frequently use the term 'war zone' to describe what it's like, the really tangible running down of that service over recent years." Swansea-born Nigel Evans made the Ribble Valley his home in the early 1990s after being elected the area's Conservative MP. Three decades later he has no plans to leave the area despite losing his seat in last month's General Election landslide.
But he lists some huge new properties like a "colossal" house in Sawley he likens to a "mini Buckingham Palace" and another "incredibly large" one in Rimington owned by one of the billionaire Issa brothers.
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