A SURVEY by the General and Municipal Boilermakers union has revealed that 17,796 homes need to be found to accommodate the demand for social housing in Worcestershire and Herfordshire.

The union said the number of families who are on waiting lists live in the council areas of Worcester, Malvern Hills, Wychavon, Wyre Forest and Herefordshire.

In Worcester 2,581 families are on the city council's list, waiting for some of the 6,170 properties to become available.

In Wychavon the numbers are 3,554 for 7,257 homes and in Malvern Hills it is 1,291 waiting for 4,344 properties.

In the neighbouring county of Herefordshire, 7,740 people are waiting for some of the county's 10,655 social housing properties.

The local numbers mirror a national crisis for which the waiting list is now 1.5m, but the amount of new homes being built for rent is at its lowest level since 1925.

Worcester City Council has announced it is looking to combat the problem through a massive public consultation exercise.

The local authority will randomly knock on doors to encourage people to talk about the chronic shortage as well as send out an eight-page document to every home in the city to get feedback on where to build new homes - just 62 affordable homes were built last year.

Claire Huyton, executive director of Malvern's Elgar Housing Association, puts the problems down to lack of affordability for private homes.

"The vacancies just are not coming up any more because people cannot afford to move on," she said.

"We have a big project coming up on the North Site in Malvern in a few years, but there is a limited availability of land in this area to build new homes. In the meantime we are helping people through a scheme called 'homebuy', where they get help paying for a percentage of their home."

Wychavon District Council also admitted there was a problem.

Gay Lloyd, senior housing needs officers for the local authority, said: "We have a very high level of housing needs and are only able to help a small percentage on that list every year.

"Demand increases each year too because house prices are higher, private rent is higher and wages are on the lower side.

"We are very pro-active in looking at this, but unfortunately there are no overnight solutions."