A PIONEERING exclusive affordable homes project has come a step closer to reality with the acquisition of the required site by a specialist Cornish developer and the imminent submission of a planning application.

The moves follow a public consultation exercise by Redruth-based Affordable Homes of Cornwall Ltd (AHOC), who wrote to all the village's residents inviting registration of interest.

The proposed development in a field off Treliever Road, Mabe, will have 12 one bedroom apartments. They will be priced around £78,500 - or as low as £58,500 with AHOC's ground-breaking new aheadstart4u.com scheme.

AHOC has acquired the site subject to the granting of planning permission and nine prospective local first-time buyers have already been identified in accordance with conditions and procedures laid down by Kerrier district council.

The homes are expressly designed for local people who could not otherwise afford to buy a property of their own.

It is the first exclusively local needs housing scheme to be proposed by AHOC, which is rapidly expanding with a number of schemes across Cornwall. Its specialist system-built units provide starter homes that are rapidly erected, built to a high specification and very competitively priced.

AHOC managing director David Worlledge said: "We have just three properties left and it looks very much as though the scheme can be fully sold within the village or from a perimeter very close to it."

AHOC's aheadstart4u.com scheme, which also offers an all-inclusive package of related services to help home buyers, has been hailed by its promoters as a home-buying "revolution", with a spectacular price breakthrough for first-time buyers. It involves a discount of the purchaser's choice which is converted into an additional annual ground rent.

Applicants must meet one of these criteria - currently employed in Mabe parish; lived in the parish at any time for at least five years; born in Mabe, educated in Kerrier district whilst under 18 and now living in the district. "Key workers" not meeting any of these criteria may also be considered.