TROUBLED Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has been landed with a new backlash from his party's New Forest stronghold.

His support for a party policy to sell off housing association homes has sparked a sharp rebuke from a major landowner.

Adding to the problem, there was clear support from New Forest West MP Julian Lewis and Hampshire County Council leader Ken Thornber - both Conservatives - for the broadside fired by Beaulieu Estate owner Ralph Montagu.

In recent years, the estate has made some of the most exclusive land in the UK available for more than a dozen housing association properties in the heart of its village.

The aim was to provide people who had grown up in the village with the chance to stay there and the properties were allocated to people with Beaulieu connections.

But at the Beaulieu Estate's annual dinner, Mr Montagu - son of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu - was clearly alarmed at the homes being sold off on to the open market.

Some housing association properties in the village have views looking straight across the Beaulieu Pond with Lord Montagu's Palace House as the backdrop.

Some could be expected to command prices approaching £250,000 if they got into the commercial market.

Warning that the reason for building the houses could be "legislated out of existence", he said: "I am referring to the wholly misguided Conservative Party policy to sell off housing association houses.

"Those who drew up the policy, which Iain Duncan Smith described as 'very, very key', are evidently unaware that rural landowners provide sites for such schemes at a fraction of the market value and do so because they understand the need for affordable accommodation in the countryside.

"If this were applied in Beaulieu, where property prices are so distorted, it would be difficult for the occupants to resist the temptation to buy and then sell on, leaving a house intended for a local person on a low income to the highest bidder in the freehold market."

He called for "the exclusion of rural schemes" from the policy and won immediate support Dr Lewis and councillor Thornber.

Dr Lewis said: "I take what Ralph says very seriously and I have asked him to write to me so I can take the matter up with the Conservative Party at the highest level."

He called for "a mixed policy, combining affordable housing in the rural areas with the ability of people to buy their first homes in the more unrestricted urban areas."

Mr Thornber said he was "quite happy to tell my party they have got it slightly wrong."

He added: "What they should do is exempt rural community housing from this form of right to buy.

"Any first house bought from a housing association at affordable prices must be sold back to the housing association, which will have the power to sell it on at an affordable price."