Designer hopes that eco villages can provide affordable new properties

ECO villages containing wooden houses on stilts and boasting solar panels and new-fangled water collection devices could soon be sprouting up across Scotland.

Several sites across west central Scotland have already been earmarked for these environmentally friendly homes - akin to Iron Age dwellings built on stilts by Scotland's lochs, called crannogs. The new houses will cover around 50sqm and cost less than £100,000. Their designer, Living Space 21 director Ray Bedeman, believes they could even help tackle the nationwide shortage of affordable housing. Across Scotland, 200,000 people are on house waiting lists, while a further 8000 stay in temporary accommodation.

Aimed at first-time buyers, young couples and single people whose only available option is to stay at home or rent with friends, the live/work "studios" on stilts borrow from a style still popular in southeast Asia.

Brave buyers can self-assemble for less than £20,000, while those leaving it to the experts will expect to pay £59,950, plus the cost of the land.

The timber frames are made by the company set up by Green Party founder Professor Michael Benfield, while buyers can pick and choose from cladding, energy use meters, roof solar panels and water collection tanks.

"It is very important to me that future generations have the resources as freely available as we do," said Bedeman, who promises to plant two trees for every one he uses. "Our houses reward environmentally friendly people at no extra cost. I wanted to take a proven building material, a proven style and give it a 21st-century makeover. Wood is the best insulation material and particularly durable, just look at all the old wooden buildings still around."

Bedeman claims far from "dropping a house from a lorry", the studio homes are in fact extremely adaptable, with possible extensions.

He added: "The double level studio is readily comparable in size with a two-bedroom flat built by Barratt or Redrow. But with theirs you have people on top, below and at either side, meaning plenty of noise. With ours you get peace."

The homes are on show this month at the National Self Build Exhibition Centre in Swindon and Bedeman is appealing to anyone with land to spare to come forward.

One Scottish eco-village site under consideration is in Old Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, while in nearby Helensburgh, at Drumfork Farm, Liz Howie and her husband David are set to buy four studios, running them as self-catering seasonal accommodation. She said: "People will come and feel as if they are in a proper house - it isn't like a chalet or a caravan. And they are really low maintenance which is appealing when we've so much to do anyway."

At present, first-time buyers considering staying in Helensburgh and other parts of Argyll and Bute face an almost impossible leap on to the property ladder where the average house price is £151,048.

A high percentage of second homes in the area, coupled with a reduction in council and housing association homes, has meant most young people have had to look elsewhere.

Helensburgh-born Joanne Macdonald, 27, bought her first house in Glasgow in March, having failed to find anywhere in budget closer to home.

She said: "I had less than £100,000 as a target but you rarely see anything for that. It was really soul destroying and I was continually forced to go back to the drawing board."

Macdonald was impressed with the look of the Living Space eco homes, but feels even they might not have kept her in the area. She added: "They look quite smart and I like the idea you could park underneath but they do look a bit like holiday homes.

"I don't think I could see myself living in one as it would be too small. I shared as a student with lots of other girls and having everything in one room did my head in."

Argyll and Bute Council housing spokesman, Councillor George Freeman, said the affordable housing proposed by Living Space 21 could be a useful solution, "particularly in areas where land supply is very limited".

Archie Stoddart, director of housing charity Shelter Scotland, said he supported any project which builds homes that contribute to a sustainable environment and help first-time buyers secure a home, but added: "With the current housing need in Scotland we'd need to see this on a much larger scale."