Ipswich councillor Carole Jones says lack of space in town behind missed housing targets

A councillor has said a lack of space in a Suffolk town has resulted in key housing targets being missed.

Ipswich’s strategic overview and scrutiny committee met last night to discuss the performance of the planning and museums portfolio headed by Cllr Carole Jones.

Although most of the performance indicators were coloured green, meaning the council’s targets had been met, the report revealed the authority had missed two key targets for housing delivery over the past year.

These were the net number of new homes being provided, and the percentage of affordable homes delivered from private developments.

Despite the target for net new homes decreasing from 540 new homes to 300 since last year, the council only managed to deliver 206, only three more than the previous year.

The main reason for this, Cllr Jones said, was the amount of space available to the council to build homes on, particularly after massive plots were earmarked for the council’s Ipswich Garden Suburb project, set to deliver 3,500 homes.

She added: “We are pro-growth, we want to see homes in Ipswich, our problem is we don’t really have large acreages waiting in the pipeline.”

The report also added the missed figure was impacted by the economic downturn and pressures on the development sector.

On affordable housing, the council only managed to deliver 3.4 per cent against a target of 15 per cent.

The report said: “For Ipswich the challenge of delivering affordable

housing on private development is largely down to viability of sites.”

Cllr Jones added Ipswich should see a larger number of affordable homes being delivered once the first stages of the Ipswich Garden Suburb project, which contain little by way of affordable housing, are completed.