Affordable housing has emerged as the issue most people want Shepway council to spend its cash on.

More than 600 people took part in a budget survey and told the council where they think it should spend its money.

In common many coastal towns, Folkestone has lower wages than much of the South East and has a correspondingly high number of people in need of social housing.

Unfortunately, the quantity of homes available to the council for housing vulnerable and homeless people has been shrinking over the past 30 years. Since the Right To Buy came into effect, Shepway went from owning 8,000 homes to 3,500 for the whole district. With little land for building, thanks to the sea to the south and the Downs to the north, and a shortage of hard cash, how has the council tackled the problem?

Director of planning and commitments Keith Cane is working with a team of officers and councillors to untangle the problem – a problem that has some roots in an ideological decision of the 1980s.

He said: “The sale of properties through Right to Buy has had an impact on many councils and it has been tough to keep pace with that loss of properties.

“There has been an issue since the 1980s about councils building themselves. It is not that it is outlawed, just that the financial regime has not made it easy.

“If you start to build accommodation with land costs it becomes very expensive, more so than if you provide a loan.

“We have been tackling the problem through improving private sector housing standards, which can themselves lead to people being homeless – if people’s flats are damp, for example."

Shepway has 500 families in private sector housing, and hit its target of removing 200 people from homelessness each year. It requires developers to make 30 per cent of each development affordable housing. Another campaign, known as No Use Empty, has improved matters by returning empty and derelict properties to good use.