BRITAIN'S first housing estates which can only be sold to local people are set to be built in East Lancashire within the next year.

Now councillors at the authority planning the ground-breaking move, to solve its affordable housing crisis, have called on residents not to foil their plans by opposing new development.

Ribble Valley Council officers have revealed they are confident they have done enough to attract big-name developers to the borough to build affordable homes. Planning permission for the new developments will include a requirement that the houses are only sold to local people, meaning people from outside the area won't be able to buy them.

Earlier this year, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph revealed the average house price in the Ribble Valley was £209,407 -- with terrace housing, the traditional stamping ground of first-time buyers, fetching more than £100,000.

With the average household income in the Ribble Valley under £30,000, the situation has left many first-time buyers unable to raise the mortgages needed to buy locally.

The council slapped a ban on luxury home developments in the hope that building firms which had already snapped up land would focus instead on affordable housing.

Six months after the ban was introduced, it has been revealed that talks with housing developers are going on over several sites in a bid to sell the local scheme, which the council says is the first of its kind in the country.

Mike Kirby, forward planning manager at Ribble Valley Council, said: "We hope that by next spring, the first developments will be being built. We have quite a few firms interested, and hopefully it will begin to ease the problem.

"In reality, that will mean people within the Ribble Valley can buy the ones built in Longridge and Clitheroe, while in the villages, such as Whalley, the houses will be sold to people from the actual village."

Housing committee chairman Coun Joyce Holgate said: "The important thing is that local people don't oppose them now."

Coun Margaret Sutcliffe, a Clitheroe councillor, added: "People need be shown that affordable doesn't mean low quality."