THINK bigger is the message from Winchester City Council on providing affordable homes.

The authority's cabinet met to discuss a government paper on the subject, which asked for its comments.

Westminster is proposing that affordable homes must be provided in every development of 15 properties or more.

The council feels that the proposed quota, which is the same as the existing one, is not ambitious enough.

Cabinet member for housing, Dominic Hiscock, criticised the Government's target, adding that many developments in Winchester contained fewer than 15 dwellings, owing to a shortage of large sites in the district.

His Liberal Democrat colleague, Thrse Evans, said that even when large sites were available, affordable housing was not guaranteed.

In some cases, developers divided the land and submitted more than one application to avoid going over the 15-property threshold, she said.

The council hopes to provide more affordable homes by setting out tougher targets in its revised local plan.

The document, which is under review by a government inspector, calls for the threshold in Winchester to be five properties, and two outside the city.

At last week's meeting, Winchester City Council leader, Sheila Campbell, suggested they should go even further, arguing that the thresholds should be scrapped and that a contribution to affordable housing should be made in every development.

With small projects, such as a single house, she said a payment could be made towards providing affordable homes elsewhere. With large developments, such properties would continue to be built on the same site, she proposed.

Chief executive, Simon Eden, sounding a note of caution, warned that more stringent targets might scare away developers and result in fewer affordable homes.

"They will steadily withdraw from an area if they consider the constraints in house-building to be too big," he added.

Before the meeting, officers presented a possible response to Westminster for the cabinet's approval.

It called for stricter quotas on affordable housing, but Mrs Campbell said the argument needed to be worded more strongly. She asked the officers to "beef up" the response before sending it to the Government.