A CASH injection of £42 million is to be ploughed into the battle against homelessness by Basingstoke council between now and 2005.

The plan should deliver 1,000 new social housing dwellings over a five year period.

"This is a very substantial programme," housing chief Denise Luker told The Gazette. She added: "We actually believe that we have got the biggest capital programme on this issue of any district council in the country. Miss Luker said the number of homeless households that the council was obliged by statute to house had fallen over the last year.

She said: "We have 14 families in bed and breakfast accommodation at present two outside the borough. We take homelessness seriously in Basingstoke."

Cabinet member for neighbourhood renewal, councillor Tony Jones said: "I have asked officers to look into ways of eradicating bed-and-breakfast as much as possible.

"We only put people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation outside the borough as a last resort.

"It has got to be of a certain standard. We are not putting them in hovels."

Cllr Jones said that in the short-term the Cabinet had approved £1.7 million to provide 31 temporary homes for homeless families.

Cllr Jones added that when Basingstoke's May Place homeless hostel recently said they had turned 14 people away in one week an investigation had shown that there were 12 places elsewhere in the borough that hostel bosses never knew about.

"We are now co-ordinating all the vacancies that are available in the borough with all the other agencies involved," said Cllr Jones.

The first step is to deal with the bottleneck at May Place by providing move-on accommodation for residents already there.

Cllr Jones said that if the co-ordinating of vacancies in the area and the provision of move-on places for May Place residents revealed more bed spaces for the homeless were required, then the council would consider providing them.

However, he added: "What we don't want is to build a 100-bed hostel and find there are already vacancies elsewhere."