Housing Development Strategy - Report - Page 6
Development objectives
Our purpose: To directly provide, facilitate and enable good quality affordable housing which
sustainably meets the current and future needs of local communities throughout East Suffolk.
One of the major challenges facing us is how to increase the supply of affordable homes across our
district. Our primary objective is to provide new homes to meet demand. We will, wherever possible,
create new homes that are suited to those with needs which are not being met by existing housing
or new build. This will be informed by a broad range of evidence including the Council’s Housing
Register.
In order to provide new homes we need;
Our Actions
1 - Build the capability
within the Housing
Development Team
to deliver a successful
development and
enabling programme.
a) land and/or properties
b) Internal and external resources to undertake a variety of work including
pre-construction, legal and valuation work
c) Contractors and developers to undertake the construction of the new
homes
To address the need to grow development capability we have created a new Housing Development
Team to co-ordinate work, supported by specialist consultants. We know that the challenge of our
commitment to develop new homes and facilitate alternative providers building homes is not yet
matched by our internal resource. Further resourcing of the Development Team is recognised as
being important to meet the challenging targets set out in the Housing Strategy and HRA Business
Plan.
We will aim to maintain a rolling 3-year plan of realistic development opportunities which will include
enough sites to meet the HRA Business Plan projection of 50+ units a year. We seek to identify a
pipeline of sites looking forward 3 years which will include undertaking strategic reviews of areas
where there are significant Council land holdings.
The Council has a corporate responsibility to ensure that it is making best use of its own assets.
It is the intention that going forward we will retain land in our ownership and develop homes
to add to our housing stock where it is economically and socially viable to do so (although
on larger Council owned sites it is likely that only a percentage of the site will be developed
for new Council housing).
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2 – Develop and
publish a 3-year
rolling development
programme with an
objective of achieving
50+ units p.a.
3 – Review corporately
all Council land
ownership to identify
potential housing
development sites for
new Council housing.
