A £14 MILLION council-led project to build more than 50 affordable homes on a former library site will take a large step forward today.

Members of Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing and new homes committee are set to agree the final designs, rent levels and funding for the redevelopment of the derelict former Whitehawk library site.

The ambitious project is part of the New Homes For Neighbourhoods which will deliver 86 new homes over the next two years.

While the desperately needed house building programme has been welcomed, concerns have been raised about costs, with one project to develop a former sheltered housing scheme already £4 million over its original budget.

Councillors are expected to move the project on when they meet today by agreeing to make the land at Findon Road available for development and approve its budget of £14.1 million.

Services at the former Whitehawk Library site, which also housed an office for social workers and a youth centre, were relocated to a new hub in Whitehawk Road in 2011 with the empty buildings demolished and the site boarded up.

Redevelopment plans propose 58 apartments with balconies in a pair of four storey brick buildings, including ten wheelchair accessible homes.

An option to sell ‘off plan’ ten further homes at market value to rent to people with learning disabilities is currently being considered.

An alternative mix of rented/open market sales was explored but was deemed unviable because of “comparatively low market values” in the area.

The homes will require more than £1 million annual subsidy from the council’s housing revenue account.

It is hoped work will begin on the site in January and be completed in March 2017.

Councillor Mary Mears, opposition spokeswoman on housing and new homes committee, said: “I do have genuine concerns about the cost and the level of subsidy required.

“We are now able to draw up to £25 million a year from the HRA but we have to take care with tenants rents.

“We have already seen rising costs with Brooke Mead which went from a budget of £8.3 million to £12 million.”

Councillor Anne Meadows, committee chairwoman, said: “Findon Road is the largest scheme to date in our New Homes for Neighbourhoods programme and will provide 58 much needed new council homes.

“If agreed at housing committee, a planning application will be submitted by the end of June.”