HAMBLETON’S commitment to creating rural affordable homes across the district has been endorsed by councillors.

Members of the district council’s cabinet agreed to continue to give the North Yorkshire Rural Housing Enabler programme £6,500 a year for the next three years.

The scheme brings together local authorities across the county, North Yorkshire County Council, the North York Moors National Park and 11 registered housing providers.

It focuses its work on settlements of less than 3,000 people – where the need to deliver affordable housing through the allocation of sites is harder than in the main towns.

In the past four years it has seen 85 affordable homes created in rural parts of Hambleton.