Councillor criticises 'bonkers' housing report

Many housing developments will not be completed within the next five years, a report has stated

A councillor has branded a report into his area's housing supply as "literally bonkers".

Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council is required to create 4,153 new homes over the next five years but a report said the local authority could only show four years' worth of deliverable housing sites.

The leader of the council's opposition Conservative group, Tony Riordan, said he believed the document was "flawed" and claimed it did not include a number of housing developments already in the works.

The council's planning services manager Simon Grundy defended the report and said not all of the homes in the developments would be built within the required five-year period.

Councillor Tony Riordan said the report did not explain why housing developments would not be completed on time

Riordan argued the report did not explain why this was the case.

"There's no evidence of why that assessment has been made or why that determination comes forward," he said.

"There's no evidence as to why major sites, such as 400 houses on Harrogate Lane, will not be delivered in a five-year period."

Pushing back, Grundy insisted his team was not "plucking numbers out of thin air" but had examined the build-out rates of developers, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

'No confidence'

Riordan said he did not find it credible that 2,000 houses could not be built over the next three years.

"It just doesn't bear any resemblance of sense to what we are asked to decide," he said.

"It is literally bonkers."

The Conservative councillor said he had no confidence in the report, which will be used to assess future planning applications.

As a result of Riordan's concerns, councillors voted to postpone consideration of an outline planning application for 11 self-build plots near Manor Close, Wolviston.