St Keverne could see more affordable homes being built through a community land scheme.

This was the news from former Helston MP Andrew George, now director of the Cornwall Community Land Trust (CCLT).

He spoke to the parish council to explain how homes could be built and sold to local people at a "significantly lower" cost, sometimes only 56 per cent of the market value.

These could be kept for local people and affordable "in perpetuity", meaning that whenever they were sold on it had to be to someone with a similar connection to the area and costing the same percentage of the market value at that time.

As it is building homes for local needs, the CCLT, which makes no profit from its work in communities, is often able secure planning permission on land that developers might not be allowed to build open-market houses on.

Speaking after the meeting Mr George told the Packet: "As an exception to normal rules, planning departments have authority to grant local developments which genuinely meet local needs, and will be for perpetuity."

He said the trust had not pre-identified any land in the St Keverne parish before he visited members and if they wanted to pursue the idea they needed to come back with a figure of how many homes were needed.

This would allow the trust to see the scale required and then put out a "call for land" to farmers and landowners in the area.

Often the land that is offered would not normally be allowed to built on, and therefore the owner would not receive market prices, or occasionally a landowner simply wanted to gift the land to the community.

This then allowed the homes to be sold below market value. While prices varied, they were never more than two thirds of market value.

Mr George told the council that if members waned to take the idea further then they could either set up a local community land trust, like those formed in Grade Ruan and Constantine, or create a working party and have the CCLT manage matters on their behalf, such as at The Lizard.

Councillors made no decision on the night and agreed to discuss the matter further at a future date, with Mr George added: "I look forward to hearing from them in due course."