FEARS are growing among civic chiefs over the potential loss of council housing under plans to extend the right to buy.

Forcing Winchester City Council to sell nearly a quarter of its houses to fund Government plans could strip poorer families of much-needed housing and threaten its ability to tackle homelessness, a meeting heard last week.

Councillors of all parties sounded warnings over the emerging Conservative policy to allow housing association tenants to buy their homes.

The plans are expected to include a social rent cut which would cost the Guildhall £5 million a year by 2019.

Liberal Democrat Jamie Scott attacked on the "depressing" proposals, claiming they would erode services and local control.

Cllr Scott, himself a council tenant, told cabinet housing committee: "This is a really depressing paper – the most depressing we've received out of all the papers we've received. A Christmas carol comes to mind – the bleak midwinter is coming. It seems as if we're not our own masters here.

Around 1,200 council houses, 24 per cent of Winchester's stock, will meet the currently assumed threshold for mandatory sales, according to council estimates.

Officers had feared mostly for family housing, but Richard Botham, assistant director for housing, said "more worrying" was the potential loss of one-bedroom homes.

The district has a particular need for one-bed units, he said, sought by more than half the 2,000 people on the district waiting list.

The council has also warned the loss of any temporary accommodation would "compromise" its ability to tackle homelessness.

But Conservative council leader Cllr Stephen Godfrey said: "Some objectors to this proposal suggest that it reduces the number of affordable homes available for rent in an area. This is not the case, as the income received by the housing association for each sale will easily cover the cost of building at least one new home.

"So the number of rented affordable homes remains the same, plus there is another privately owned home in the area, occupied by the owners, bringing the many benefits that home ownership attracts.

"There is one area where I am anxious about right to buy changes," he added, "and that concerns rented affordable homes on rural exception sites."