IN A bizarre political twist a Dorset Tory has called for a return of council housing – while Dorset Council's Lib Dem housing spokesman says she would not support the move.

Littlemoor and Preston councillor Louie O'Leary (Con) told fellow councillors the only answer to Dorset's housing shortage was for the Government to give Dorset Council the money and power to once again build and run its own council homes.

Cllr O'Leary said he and most of his family were born and lived in council properties, which was once the norm in many parts of the country.

He said that talk about community land trusts and co-operative housing and other schemes was "nibbling around the edges."

"The only way to solve the housing issue in this country is for the Government to give us the power, the money and the resources to go back to building council houses. It is that simple, but obviously we are not in that situation," he said.

Cllr O'Leary said there remained "a stigma" about living in social housing which he said should be fought against, with a need for more homes to be allocated to working people, to encourage them to stay in the area.

Dorset Council's housing and health portfolio holder, Chickerell Lib Dem councillor Gill Taylor, said her personal view was that the Council was not set-up or resourced for the move.

"It would be a mistake for us to go into council housing. We are not geared up for it: If we wanted to start doing that it would be probably five or six years before we could deliver any council homes. I think we are far better to start working in partnership with our registered providers – they are geared up as developers; they have got architects, they have got planners on board, we haven't got any of that, and we haven't got any housing management at scale to be able to do it," she said.

The meeting heard that even where 'affordable' homes were built as part of private development schemes many registered providers/housing associations were reluctant to then manage those properties.

At the start of this financial year Dorset Council said there were 5,595 households on the housing register in need of a home for rent with between 400 and 500 applications being added to that number each month.

"Given the national housing crisis, compounded by the cost of living crisis we have seen a significant increase in demand with an unprecedented high number of households applying each month," said a council spokesperson at the time.

The authority says that all applications are assessed in date order unless there is an urgent reason to escalate a case.

At the end of February the council recorded 280 households in temporary accommodation which included 79 in bed and breakfast, or hotels, of which 28 are families; 36 were in hostels where they might have to share kitchen and bathroom facilities; 158 in self-contained homes and 7 in self-contained family caravan on holiday parks.