AN all-out drive to provide affordable homes for low-income young people and struggling families was urged on Salisbury district council this week.

The move follows a council survey showing that, in each of the next five years, members of 797 South Wiltshire households are likely to be seeking affordable housing - in a soaring property market in which house prices and private rents are already far out of their reach.

A working party has spent the past six months looking at ways of getting to grips with the crisis and took the unusual step of taking its report to the full council on Monday night, short-cutting the usual, time-consuming route of committee meetings.

Now councillors have referred the report and its call for urgent action to the October 16 meeting of the council cabinet, with a plea for it to give the recommendations its stamp of approval.

These include:

delivering 350 new affordable homes over the next three years, including rural housing, and bringing empty properties back into use;

enabling, by offering improved financial incentives, older council house tenants to move into smaller properties - releasing larger homes to be relet to families;

negotiating with developers to build for sale 100 one and two-bedroom properties;

making the provision of affordable housing a clear corporate commitment that should not be sacrificed to other planning gains;

seeking continuous improvement through effective partnerships with both public and private sectors.

The report also urges more robust action by the council to persuade developers to build social housing as part of planning permission for private estates and encouraging country landowners to develop and refurbish accommodation as affordable homes.