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Dozens of sites in towns and villages in the Lake District National Park have been earmarked for affordable housing for local people.

Community and voluntary organisations will now be able to bid for part of £100m Government funding for pioneering housing schemes that will ensure empty properties that ruin neighbourhoods are lived in once again, and at the same time provide affordable housing.

The average new three bedroom home currently being built by the UK's top house builders is around 8% smaller than the basic recommended minimum size depriving thousands of families the space needed for children to do homework, adults to work from home, guests to stay and for members of the household to relax together.

New research, based on interviews with developers and the latest information about environmental technologies, shows the overall extra costs of building new homes to standards set in the Code for Sustainable Homes is falling year on year.

The eight short-listed design teams have been announced for the competition to redevelop the Windermere Steamboat Museum on the shores of Lake Windermere in the Lake District National Park.

Eleven projects from across the North West, including three in Cumbria, have been short-listed for the RIBA's Northern Network Awards.

As part of its commitment to the Great British pub, the Government has launched a review of restrictive covenants, a legal clause that can be used to prevent community pubs reopening as public houses following a sale.

Public consultation over plans to allow thousands of affordable homes to be built in South Lakeland is being extended after 300 alternative sites were suggested.

Excavation of a Roman site at Maryport, in Cumbria, is near completion.

The Affordable Homes Programme has surpassed expectations, with 146 providers sharing almost £1.8 billion to build 80,000 homes under the programme - putting the Government on track to deliver up to 170,000 new homes by 2015, and safeguarding some 80,000 jobs in construction and related trades.