The National Housing Federation has warned that Conservative plans to require a 90% positive vote by local people for affordable village homes to be delivered through local housing trusts (LHTs) could hand a veto to rumps of local Nimbys.

The Conservatives are proposing the creation of LHTs, which would be new community-led bodies with planning powers to develop local homes for local people. However, they say that LHTs would only be able to build new homes where there is strong community backing, which they have defined as 90% support in community referenda.

While the Federation supports the Tory proposals for the setting up of LHTs it says the 90% threshold is far too high.

And says that recent opinion polling conducted on behalf of the organisation shows the majority of rural dwellers believe the level of local support required for new affordable housing should be far lower at around 50-70%.

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In the poll of 800 rural dwellers across England, 54% said that a threshold of 50-70% support for affordable housing should be sufficient for the new homes to get the go-ahead, whereas just 4% said 90% was the right figure.

The Federation believes that the building of new homes in rural areas is crucial because of a growing rural housing crisis – with a lack of affordable homes in villages and market towns driving thousands of young people and families from the countryside to urban areas every year.

As a result of this process, many villages are increasingly becoming populated by older people, wealthy commuters and second home owners – with record numbers of services and amenities coming under threat because of a decline in their traditional customer bases.

Federation Chief Executive David Orr said: "We believe the Tory proposal for LHTs could be an excellent way for ensuring the building of desperately needed affordable homes in rural areas – but we fear that a requirement for a 90% vote in favour of new homes will effectively provide a veto to a rump of local Nimbys.

"There will always be some people who oppose the idea of building any new homes and if the threshold for a vote in favour of new affordable housing is set as high as 90% then we believe that small groups of local Nimbys will virtually always be able to block the proposals."

(CD/BMcC)