AFFORDABLE housing projects earmarked for Evesham and Pershore are being stopped in their tracks due to changes in how they are funded.

Wychavon District Council leaders are so concerned about the way the Government

has introduced the changes they are highlighting the issue to residents.

Among schemes hit by the Government's decision to scrap Local Authority Social Housing Grants are 26 Cowl Street and Vale Court and The Leys, all Evesham and Pershore Housing Association projects in Evesham. Under the previous arrangement, councils had a statutory duty to provide affordable homes, funded them and received the cash back from Westminster. The changes mean the cash will go straight to housing associations, yet local authorities will still be obliged to provide the homes. The council's board member for resources,

Coun Clive Holt, said: "We are being pressed by Government agencies to have five-year plans and to have strategies to deal with all these things.

So it came as a shock earlier this year to be told that LASHGs were to be discontinued."

He added: "Bearing in mind that our housing waiting list is over 2,000, this means people are going to have to wait a lot longer to get a house that they basically need."

The scrapping of LASHGs puts 131 homes, costing £4million, in jeopardy across the district. Wychavon's board member for housing and health, Coun Judy Pearce, said: "As well as removing

the LASHGs, the Government said there would be a transitional period of three months when housing associations could put in bids for schemes that have received planning permission but which haven't been started.

"Subsequent to that, and when a number of agreements had been signed by the housing associations, the Government then said we had got to claim the money within three months, otherwise it would not give us the grant." Developments for which funding is being sought under the transitional arrangements include EPHA schemes at Cherry Orchard House, Pershore,

the former Gulf service station site at Waterside, Evesham and St Agatha's, Pershore.