AN Exclusive Gazette investigation has revealed that Bradford Council plans to pay a fortune to provide a handful of flats in Ilkley while selling off hundreds of homes on the cheap.

Housing chiefs are preparing to sell the town's 305 council homes at an average of just £2,600 each, while spending £250,000 on helping to subsidise just 12 'affordable rent' one-bedroom private flats.

Council tenants in Ilkley - where the average private house price is almost £200,000 - will see their properties bought by private landlords in six months for an average of £2,592 each.

The date has been set for the wholesale sell-off of Bradford Council's 27,000 council homes to a non-profitmaking company, the Bradford Community Housing Group.

The group will pay Bradford Council a total of £70 million to take over the running of the district's housing stock on February 3.

Most people, including Bradford housing chief Kris Hopkins (Con, Worth Valley), have admitted that the council has let its tenants down over the years by providing a poor service and letting homes fall into disrepair.

Tenants, the bosses of the new not-for-profit trusts, and other observers see the privatisation of the housing stock as the only way to guarantee £175 million worth of much needed repairs and renovations.

But the financial consortiums funding the buyout and providing the repair money will have to be paid back with interest, leading to fears that rents will rise steeply once a five-year agreement to peg them back runs out.

And unions representing the 900 housing workers which will be transferred to the new owners fear that the financial pressures could lead to cuts in staffing levels.

The irony of the sell-off on the cheap is brought into focus when Bradford Council revealed that it is costing a quarter of a million pounds to subsidise rents in just 12 flats on a new housing development in Ilkley.

The one-bedroom flats are being built on the site of the former International Wool Secretariat research centre in Valley Drive.

Developer Bellway Homes (Yorkshire), has built one and two-bedroom apartments starting at almost £90,000 each. As part of planning permission being granted to build a total of 70 houses and flats on the site, the developer had to include 12 'affordable' homes available at 25 per cent less than their market value.

But such is the price of property in Ilkley, even 25 per cent off would not allow a housing association to buy the properties and offer them at 'affordable' rents. The council is not allowed to provide affordable housing itself, but must work with developers and housing associations.

As a result Bradford Council's housing development chiefs are planning to step in with £250,000 to make sure that rents can be offered at £65-a-week.

The money comes from a pot of £440,000 provided by Miller Homes, the company developing the site of Ilkley College on Wells Road.

Planning rules allow developers to pay 'commuted sums' to local authorities to help provide affordable homes. It lets developers bypass the rule that each housing development should contain a percentage of affordable homes for the less well off.

Commuted sums apply often where the land value of particular sites precludes the provision of affordable houses in that location. It lets local authorities use the money to provide affordable housing in more appropriate places.

Housing development and enabling manager Shabir Mohammed said: "Because of high house prices in the Wharfedale area, provision of affordable housing is a key priority for Bradford Council.

"It is essential that we get good value and carefully consider what commuted sums earmarked for affordable housing and received from developers, should be spent on."

Mr Mohammed said that the rest of the college site money, around £200,000 had still not been allocated in Ilkley, but there was widespread acceptance that sites were extremely difficult to find because of the very high land values.

The crisis is leading to an exodus of young people who have no chance to get on the first rung of the housing ladder in their home town.

Ilkley Labour Party spokesman Geoff Best said: "I find it very sad that social housing is in decline and people suffer as a result. People growing up in Ilkley will never own their own