DETAILS of the first phase of a large council house-building programme in Carmarthenshire have been unveiled.

The Plaid-Independent administration has previously said it wants to build more than 900 council houses, with an estimated cost of £143m.

Housing chiefs have divided the county into four areas to reflect affordable housing needs as part of a delivery plan for the 10-year project.

The Llanelli and district area gets the lion’s share of the new properties (439), followed by Carmarthen and the west (188), Ammanford and the Amman Valley (186), and Carmarthen rural and market towns (119).

The aim is to deliver 374 new houses in the first three-year phase with 242 of these in the Llanelli area.

Carmarthenshire’s head of homes and safer communities, Jonathan Morgan said: “The plan is ambitious and will hopefully leave a lasting legacy.”

There would, he added, be “massive” employment opportunities.

The programme will return Carmarthenshire’s council housing stock to levels last seen in the 1990s and mainly be financed by council borrowing. Welsh Government grants will also play their part.

Some of the homes will be built by the council’s arms’ length housing company Cartrefi Croeso while partnerships with private developers will also be explored.

He reassured the communities scrutiny committee the houses would be of a decent size and energy efficient and would use technology to help meet people’s health needs where required.

“They will certainly be far bigger than we have seen built by private developers,” he said.

In a separate pledge in 2016 the council said it would deliver 1,000 affordable homes across Carmarthenshire by bringing empty properties back into use and supporting private landlords through a special housing agency among other methods.

Updating the committee on this five-year plan, Mr Morgan said: “After the first three years we have nearly delivered 700 homes – we are quite confident that we will get close to or even above the 1,000 homes by the end of the fourth year.”