Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities, Cllr Lynda Thorne, made the announcement of plans to extend the Council’s existing target of delivering 1,000 new homes by another 1,000 properties at Full Council yesterday evening.

Cllr Thorne said: “I’m delighted to announce the Council’s intention to deliver a further 1,000 new council homes in the city, on top on the 1,000 homes we have already committed to complete by 2022.

“We are one of only a handful of local authorities building new council homes and this level of increase is unprecedented. Our original target of 1,000 homes was a great start but we are ambitious and want to go further.

“We understand the importance of having a good quality, affordable home and with a very long housing waiting list in the city, we need to ensure we are doing everything we can to address the increasing pressure to provide decent homes for the people who need them.”

The Council is currently partnering national housing developer, Wates Residential, in a 10-year programme that is well underway to build 1,500 new homes across 40 sites in the city. At least 40% of the new homes will be affordable housing.

To achieve the original target of 1,000 homes, the Council is also buying property from the open market, converting existing buildings into housing, using innovative housing solutions such as off-site modular systems and entering into package deals whereby new properties are bought straight from a developer.

The first 1,000 homes will be completed by 2022 and work is underway to identify suitable council-owned land or property for council house development for the second phase of the programme to take the total to 2,000 homes.