Wiltshire Council has been criticised for spening £22,000 on a questionnaire that asks personal questions about people’s sexuality and level of debt.

Campaign group Privacy International and opposition councillors at Wiltshire Council have condemned the questions in the survey, which is being undertaken to understand future housing needs in the county.

The survey is being carried out by a company on behalf of the Conservative-run council at a cost of £22,000 and forms have been sent to 26,500 private and social housing homes.

Coun Jon Hubbard, leader of the Liberal Democrat group at Wiltshire Council, said: “We are paying an outside company a ridiculous amount of money and this is using a slegehammer to crack a nut. I cannot for the life of me see how people’s level of debt and sexual orientation has any bearing on the house they live in. It shows how out of touch this council is.

“The council have made this survey so wordy with many inappropriate and, frankly, horrific questions. The council are going to have an extremely poor take up so the data will be unusable.”

Alexander Hanff of Privacy International said: “Questions about sexual orientation (and) how much money you have in the bank are highly personal questions.

“They’re asking for far too much data with far too many variants.”

The survey was put out to competitive tender. The company chosen provided the best value bid, said Alistair Cunningham, Wiltshire Council’s service director for economy and enterprise. He said the company carrying out the survey would remove the personal details of the respondents when it passed on the results to the council.

He said: “In terms of levels of debt, Wiltshire housing is the most expensive in the country in relation to income of residents and people who work in Wiltshire.

“We have a problem already and we have to understand the amount of affordable housing that we need to provide, so again that’s having the evidence.”

On asking questions on sexual orientation he said that the council is required by legislation to do so.

Wiltshire Council has received six complaints about the survey. The company has received five complaints.

* The National Census questionnaires will begin arriving in people’s homes from March 7.