£20m to be spent on building more than 150 council homes

Half of the funding for the new homes has come from the Government's Homes and Communities Agency, which has handed out a total of 122.6m to 73 local councils in England.

Barnsley will receive 3.9m, Doncaster 1.4m, Rotherham 2.3m and Sheffield 2.1m. That grant money will be matched by money borrowed by the local authorities, leading to a total investment of almost 20m.

A total of 62 new houses will be built in Barnsley – in Darfield, Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne. This is in addition to a bid for funding for 16 new apartments at Vernon Crescent in Worsbrough, which has already been given approval.

Councillor Bill Newman, cabinet spokesman for development at Barnsley Council, said: "The competition for this grant funding was open to all local authorities in England and the success of all the Barnsley bids is a testament to the quality of the bids that we submitted.

"I am very proud to be able to announce that a total of 78 new council dwellings for rent will be built in the borough by April 2011.

"Officers from the council and Berneslai Homes have worked very hard to pull together the successful bids."

In Doncaster, 24 new homes will be built at Hesley Court, in Denaby Main, and in Rotherham, 41 new homes will be built in Maltby and West Melton.

In Sheffield, 27 new houses will be built in Burngreave and Parson Cross.

Councillor Bob McCann, Sheffield Council's Cabinet Member for Housing and Sustainable, Safer Communities, said: "We are delighted that we have been given the green light to build another 27 new homes, especially as we were given funding for 27 new homes in Shirecliffe during the summer.

"These 54 houses are the first council homes to be built for 20 years and they will have some of the highest standards of energy efficiency in the city.

"It will also give a much-needed boost to the local construction industry."

Sheffield Council bid for a total of 83 homes on nine sites. The successful bids were for 19 houses in Burngreave and six houses in Parson Cross, all of which will be two, three or four-bedroomed family homes.