Four West Dorset affordable housing schemes will share £350,000 of district council money as a ‘kick start’ for the projects.

Cabinet housing brief holder Cllr Tim Yarker said without the financial help the schemes might fail.

The biggest figure, of £150,000, goes to a community land trust development for 20 flats on the tennis court site at the edge of the Trinity Street car park. The land is being given by the town council which has just opened new courts in the Borough Gardens to offset those being given up for the scheme.

Once built the homes will remain as low cost – targeted at younger local people.

A project in Powerstock is to be given £95,000 for eight homes. Cllr Yarker said that the project had suffered a change of developer after the original company ran into financial difficulties. There had been proposals to scale-back the development to save money but local people objected to the changes.

At Winterbourne Abbas £91,000 is to go for a 13 homes project where power cables need to be moved together with other unexpected additional costs.

“It will cost an extra £7,000 per unit but we’ve judged that as a sound investment to get this site over the line,” said Cllr Yarker.

The other site which he said needed a ‘kick start’ is at Mosterton where £15,000 will go towards 36 homes to sort out what he described as a land ownership ‘issue’.

Some of the money for the projects will come from a fund made up of a premium developers pay to the council, known as Section 106 funding. The council also has £1.25 million set aside in another fund which it was awarded in 2016-17 specifically for community-led housing projects.

The funding was unanimously agreed at a meeting of West Dorset District Council’s strategy committee on Tuesday (29th).