HOUSING chiefs are optimistic that South Lakeland will benefit from a £65 million government cash pledge to revitalise the local housing market.

The funding was announced this week by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as part of a five-year plan to help people on low incomes climb on to the property ladder, a problem that has reached crisis point in South Lakeland and the Lake District National Park.

Recent surveys have shown that the disparity between wages and house prices in South Lakeland is so great that young people wanting to buy a starter home would need to borrow nearly six times their annual earnings to afford it.

The raft of measures includes the construction of 15,000 low-cost starter homes on publicly owned land, including 100 former NHS sites.

Community and housing manager at SLDC Ian Elleray said that West Cumbria was already in line for government funding to pay for renovating unfit homes in Allerdale, Copeland and Barrow-in-Furness and "there are grounds for optimism" that South Lakeland would also receive money.

"In the past, with regards to housing issues, the Government has tended to focus on London and the South East but this announcement is encouraging in that it means it is beginning to address affordability problems in the rest of the country," he said.

Up to 300,000 council and housing association tenants in England are also be given the opportunity to buy a share of 50 per cent or more of their homes under a new Homebuy scheme.

The director of housing services at the Northern Counties Housing Assoc-iation, Carol Matthews, said that the shared-ownership scheme gave householders a stake in their homes and benefited local communities as, when they sold them and moved on, the housing association bought the share back and ploughed the profits back into affordable housing.

With the average price of a one-bedroom flat in South Lakeland standing at between £80,000 and £100,000, more and more young people were finding themselves trapped in the parental home, unable to afford a home of their own.

Nineteen-year-old Nicola Wilson, from Kendal, has had her name down for a house with a local occupancy clause at The Oaks, Oxenholme Road, Kendal, for around a year.

Miss Wilson and her partner live with their respective parents and she says that while they both want to move in together, they were unwilling to pay high rents to landlords, and inflated house prices meant that they were unable to afford a house at current market value.

Under the terms of the scheme they are entitled to buy their home at 70 per cent of the market value but, when they move on, they too must sell it to a first-time buyer at 70 per cent of the market value.

"I think it's a great scheme, especially with house prices in Kendal being as high as they are, it gives us the chance to own our own home. The only other alternative is to rent from private landlords and if you are paying rent of £500 a month, how can you afford to save for a deposit on you own place," she said.