FORTY affordable homes are due to be provided in Looe as part of a new housing development.

Work on the homes is beginning as the waiting lists for social housing in South East Cornwall continue to grow.

The first phase of construction work on the new Barratt Homes estate at St Martin's, Looe, got under way on Monday.

Of the first 100 homes to be built, 40 will be classed as affordable for those who live in Looe. Of these, 20 will be for rent, 12 for outright purchase and eight for part-ownership.

There are 412 applicants on the council house waiting list for Looe, of which 307 people are local.

Cornwall Councillor Armand Toms said the second phase on the site would be for a further 87 houses and it is hoped that some of those would be affordable.

'I know the scheme just started seems like a pebble in the water for the numbers we need to get our local people into houses they can afford, but it's a start,' he said.

Cornwall Council has confirmed that the latest figure for people registered on its housing waiting list is 21,975 countywide.

Liskeard has 744 applicants waiting, Saltash 728, Torpoint 402 and Callington 250.

A spokeswoman in the Liskeard-based office for the South East Cornwall area said the figures only related to those wanting to live in the towns.

Demand

'People who only want to live in specific villages such as St Cleer or Pensilva, are not calculated in these lists, so there is actually a higher number of people registered than the town figures suggest,' she said.

Cornwall assistant head of housing Adrian Pengelly said the demand has always exceeded the supply but the gap was getting wider.

'Our lists are growing but we have one of the best records in the country as a council in turning around empty council houses ready for re-let,' he said.