A community land trust project could soon be set up in the Falmouth area in an effort relieve the housing shortage of reasonably priced housing for local people to buy or rent.

A similar scheme has already been set up on the Roseland where it is being heralded a success.

The project for the Falmouth area would lead to publicly owned land being transferred into the trust on which reasonable priced homes are built. It could also involve local farmers whereby they too could transfer land for special housing and receive an income from it.

Planning restrictions can also be overcome to allow permission to be granted on land that otherwise would not.

Once built the houses would be sold or rented to local people who would otherwise not be able to afford to buy or rent.

The move comes at a time when Falmouth's housing needs have been of considerable concern in the area with the mayor of the town, Mike Varney already trying to identify land which could be made available.

Suggestions that the Recreation Ground be used have not been well received but other sites are said to be suitable.

The scheme is being promoted by Sarah Newton, who is the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Falmouth and Truro. The former Falmouth school pupil who now lives in Mylor with her family said she believed the Cornwall Community Land Trust was a good way forward to help deliver local homes for local people. It would help many people or couples on or below £30,000 a year to obtain a property or a mortgage.

She agrees the time has come for action rather than words and wants to see something done now. The situation was desperate in the Falmouth area as well as elsewhere.

The Community Land Trust decides who is eligible. If an owner decides to sell the property, it is sold to another local person, thus ensuring the homes remain for the sole benefit of local people and their community.

Mrs Newton and her Carrick colleagues have called on Cornwall county council to make land they owned available to the Trust.

The authority was one of the largest landowners in the county with land in and around towns and villages, she said.

Mrs Newton claimed the county council and the RDA had been reluctant to pass over land.

"The Community Land Trust project has identified many appropriate sites for development where there is real local need and the land is not being made available. As the land is to be used for affordable housing the council is not obliged to sell-it to the highest bidder."

Steve Chamberlain, Carrick cabinet member said: "We want to build affordable homes for local needs. I don't see our kids being able to live here in the foreseeable future if we fail. We don't want to build large numbers of market rate houses simply to subsidise vital local needs housing. Yet we will, I believe, be forced down that route by the Regional Assembly through their Regional Spatial Strategy unless we come up with plausible alternatives.

"Currently, there seems to be a willingness to put over 50,000 new houses in Cornwall in the next 20 years, 12,000 in Carrick alone. I believe we need probably only 40% of that figure for local needs. With land now approaching £1million per acre in some parts of Carrick, our options are drying up and it is becoming more and more difficult to deliver the number of affordable homes needed. The Community Land Trust initiative, whilst still in its infancy, shows a great deal of promise and should be allowed to develop as one way of providing homes for locals without having to concrete over our County."

Terrye Teverson, the Liberal parliamentary candidate for Truro and Falmouth, spoke up about the affordable housing crisis in Cornwall at her party's conference and criticised the ever increasing number of second homes.

"Tonight in Cornwall 19,000 families are waiting for a home while nearly the same number are standing empty, mostly being used as second homes in Cornwall."

She agreed affordable housing was a national issue, but nowhere else was it such a problem as in her constituency in Truro and Falmouth.

"The situation in my area is so serious that Matthew Taylor, the current Truro and St Austell MP has been asked by Gordon Brown to report on the issue of affordable housing.

"Truro and Falmouth has the biggest affordability gap in the country. Homes here cost 16 times the average income."