THE toil of the army of volunteers in North Yorkshire is worth about £51m to the local economy, it has been claimed.

In the Ryedale district alone their work is worth about £9m, says the chief officer of Ryedale Voluntary Action.

He told the annual meeting of Ryedale Carers Support that the district had 2,905 volunteers covering a field of activities and 150,858 people had benefited from their work.

Together, they had put in 61,261 hours of work, equivalent to a salary bill of £2.3m.

He said of the 48,000 people in Ryedale, 27 per cent were over 60.