Nobody seems to know the reasons for this decline. One is that some of the houses to which I refer are holiday homes and are unoccupied for long periods. Other factors are that people are moving into towns and that younger people may have taken up summer jobs, etc., and may have been residing in the towns on the night the census took place. By any standard, it is a significant drop in population in a rural area – particularly when one considers that 10,000 houses were built. I do not know the answer in terms of reversing the decline in rural areas, but something needs to be done.