IT is strange that one of the flagship policies of Margaret Thatcher's reign is now providing our local authorities with a king size headache.

At the time the "right to buy" council homes was hailed as a triumph of the free market but now rural authorities such as Craven are drawing up all sorts of tangled legal schemes to try to minimise the effect of the legislation.

Cut price homes, with legal obligations to sell on at a fraction of the market value, is the latest idea to try to enable lower income households (and this is, for many people, a low income area) to find a roof over their heads.

John Sykes, the chief executive of Craven Housing, which took over the stock of council houses from Craven District a year ago, has warned that the number of homes on its books was bound to slip below 1,500 this year. He pleaded with the council to provide more land to allow more "low cost" homes to be built.

We have become so used to the idea of "green belts" and maintaining settlements within their existing boundaries that suggesting any large scale development is seen as something wicked.

Yet the pressures on housing are so great that a brave politician may decide that the only solution would be to build an entire new village on what are now green fields. A village with a hefty proportion of houses carrying all the necessary legal niceties to ensure that they remain cut-price homes for local workers not weekend retreats for southerners; properties which cannot be sold on at vast profit. In short, a totally new village, with a population of 1,000.

But where could this new village be constructed? There's the dilemma - which politician would dare even suggest a suitable site?