DALSTON farmer and chartered surveyor, Craig Brough, will join the team at Hopes of Wigton heading up the company’s land agency business.

Mr Brough, currently H&H Land and Property associate director, based at Rosehill, Carlisle, is taking over from Ian Ritchie, who leaves the auctioneering firm in early June.

A member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS) and Fellow the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (FAAV), Mr Brough is heavily involved with the family farm, managing the sheep flock and day-to-day work with the dairy herd.

He has also been developing his own pedigree Jersey and Holstein cattle herds with strong emphasis on show type and genetics, recently selling bulls into AI stud.

After attending Caldew School in Dalston, Mr Brough then graduated from Harper Adams University College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science (with Honours) in Rural Enterprise and Land Management.

He went on to win the Jonathan Turnbull Prize for the highest placed student in the CAAV entrance examinations in the Northumbria and Cumbria Branch (2009).

A retired county chairman of Cumbria Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, Mr Brough, was awarded 2nd National Ambassador of the Year of Young Farmers Clubs in 2011 and in the same year the President’s Medal Award for Holstein Young Breeders.

He is also a Cumbria Branch Committee Member of the Country Land and Business Association and a Trustee of Dalston Agricultural Society. His hobbies and interests include YFC,cycling and skiing.

Paul Benson, a director of Hopes, “Ian has done a good job and we wish him well in the future. Craig will join us in early June to maintain continuity. He is keen and wants to see the land agency succeed.”