THE number of people on the council house waiting list in Durham City has almost doubled in less than three years.

Since October 2002, the numbers waiting for a council house have gone up from 1,815 to 3,528 this month.

At the same time, council house sales under the Right To Buy scheme - which are falling elsewhere in the country - have seen the authority's housing stock shrink at an average rate of 200 homes a year, down to 6,500. Of that total, as many as 1,000 are one-bedroom bungalows for the elderly.

The result has been an ever increasing demand for starter homes for first-time buyers, which has pushed the price of new homes out of reach of many young people.

The plan unveiled yesterday will allow for the building of at least 500 new houses around the district.

While many of these new homes are likely to be built by private developers, the majority, according to the council, will either be social housing for rent, or starter homes built by the Durham Villages Regeneration Company (DVRC), the company set up as a partnership by the city council and Keepmoat plc.

The authority says some of the housing built by the DVRC will have prices pegged in the region of £110,000, to keep them within the price range of first-time buyers, while more than £5m income from sales will be ploughed back into the council's coffers.