PEOPLE living in rural areas have set up their own charitable trust to ensure that elderly neighbours can remain in their own homes for longer.

Elderly people from Upper Eskdale, on the North York Moors, faced moving miles away from friends and relatives to an urban environment when they were unable to care for themselves at home.

Now local residents have established the Esk Moors Caring scheme, which brings together voluntary groups, a specialist housing provider and care workers.

The charitable company, set up by the villagers of Castleton and surrounding communities, will employ and train care workers to help elderly people in their own homes.

Conventional home help is often unavailable in the remote area and the elderly usually had to move to towns such as Whitby.

Work will begin later this year on a key element of the project, a purpose-built "extra care" housing scheme with self-contained flats, on-site services and increasing care as residents need it.

The scheme will be run by the Abbeyfield UK care home chain.

North Yorkshire County Council will help to fund Esk Moors Caring in return for care provision on behalf of the authority.

The trust already runs some activities and rents the former butcher's shop in Castleton, renamed The Meet Shop, as an office and drop-in advice centre.

Keep fit and swimming lessons are being organised, winter emergency helpers are being enlisted in each village and minibus trips to lunch, the theatre and the cinema have begun.

"This is a tremendous project, absolutely at the cutting edge of where social care should be going," said County Councillor Chris Metcalfe, executive member for adult and community services.

Peter Knapp, a volunteer for the project, said: "Health care and social care are both too costly to provide from centres which serve the neighbouring, but distant, urban and semi-urban areas because of the distance and low population density.

"Moreover, social services departments have always had difficulty with the recruitment of carers. As a result, the problems suffered long-term by country people in these areas of difficult geography, isolation, poor roads and very little public transport intensify with the years."