AS the Salisbury Journal campaign for affordable housing gains pace, some promising developments mean the city could be one step closer to affordable homes.

Since our appeal for plots in last week's paper, the newsroom has been flooded with calls from landowners wanting to offer land for shared equity schemes.

Now Housing Matters Wessex, the Salisbury-based company behind the affordable homes initiative, has entered into discussions with a handful of local landowners relating to sites at Ford, West Winterslow and Newton Toney, among others.

Other offers, yet to be investigated, have come in regarding sites in Fordingbridge, Wilton and Old Sarum.

Housing Matters Wessex director Carl Strachan remains optimistic that some 30 or 40 per cent of the sites already offered are viable but subject to planning consent and support from parish councils and Salisbury district council.

He said: "I think the prospects are really quite exciting.

"Some of the landowners who have contacted us have genuine wishes to benefit their communities.

"The responses that have been received give us quite a few opportunities and there are also sites here that I hope we would have serious negotiations and interest in," he said.

"The most important thing is to have dialogue with the parish and district councils.

"We have been given some very interesting opportunities in the area that certainly should be investigated more fully through Salisbury district council and parish councils.

"I am very hopeful that some of the opportunities will come to fulfilment."

The latest news comes just weeks after the Journal launched a campaign to get more affordable properties in the district for professional people unable to get on to the housing ladder in Salisbury because of soaring house prices.

Shared equity homes offered by Housing Matters Wessex would see purchasers paying for housing at cost - less than half the current price of an average two- or three-bedroom house in the city.

Purchasers would buy 50 or 60 per cent of their home and then pay a £20 weekly rental to the Salisbury-based firm to cover remaining costs.

If you have land that you would like to sell, such as an exceptions site, where a plot is attached to the edge of a village that cannot be used for alternative, commercial or conventional development, or it is a brownfield site, then please e-mail gaetana.prassede@salisburyjour

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