GOVERNMENT proposals threaten to reduce the delivery of much-needed affordable housing in the countryside.

The warning was issued by the Rural Services Network in response to a government consultation on a proposed 10-unit threshold for section 106 affordable housing contributions.

"From a rural perspective, this is a hugely significant issue," said the network's response to the consultation.

Implementing the 10-unit threshold would "significantly impact on the delivery of much needed affordable homes in rural communities," it added.

"Rural affordable homes are difficult to deliver for a variety of reasons and it is critical that existing routes to deliver such homes are not cut off," said the network.

A large proportion of the delivery of affordable housing in communities of less than 3,000 population was through section 106 sites that are 10 units or less, it added.

In the 2008/11 Affordable Housing Programme, for example, 75% of rural delivery was through this route. Removing this potential delivery would have a potentially massive impact on delivery.

In addition, the section 106 route had provided an increasingly important mechanism to lever in funding to ensure that delivery still took place as public resources had reduced.

"Introducing the threshold will reduce the provision of affordable homes in rural areas," the network warned.

The viability of specific developments could be assessed in relation to each application and if the provision of affordable homed creates a viability problem this could be assessed at that time.

But a variety of models of affordable homes existed.

Even where one model proved to be unviable there may well be alternative models which did not lead to unviability of the scheme overall.

Introducing the threshold would inevitably increase reliance on rural exception sites which entailed high up-front costs and involved sometimes unpredictable delivery, said the network.

The full consultation response can be downloaded here.