WHEN and where to build 'affordable' housing in Ilkley are not the clear cut and obvious questions many people would assume them to be at first glance.

First-time home buyers and those without executive incomes would applaud Bradford Council's policy of earmarking a percentage of every development of more than 25 houses as 'affordable' housing only.

However good the concept, implementing the practicalities of such arrangements can be a frustrating exercise.

Some parish councillors in Addingham are still smarting from a Bradford C ouncil decision to let a developer put money into an 'affordable housing' pot rather than actually build cheaper houses for the villagers. The money is still sitting in the pot, while young people are leaving the village for less expensive areas.

Then there is the idea of what is an affordable house. To some people it might be £200,000 and to others it could be £35,000 or less.

Arrangements with housing associations can be complicated, leading to hybrid half-mortgage and half-tenancy deals on houses which would otherwise be out of the price range of many young people.

The basic mathematics of the situation is simple. The more expensive the houses on the site, the more profit there is to make.

Developers have been forced to include a percentage loss of profit on each development because of the concept of 'affordable housing'.

But that is no good if that loss of profit does not benefit immediately the people whom it is supposed to help.

When it is possible, developers should simply build cheaper houses on their sites instead of having to enter into complicated financial arrangements which may or may not bear fruit at a later stage.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.