East Suffolk: Green upgrades halt council home increase

It was recommended to East Suffolk Council it should build 100 council homes a year

The number of council houses built annually cannot be increased due to the costs of making existing properties greener, a local authority said.

East Suffolk Council considered a suggestion to double the number of new homes from 50 to 100 a year.

But its Cabinet rejected the recommendation because the cost for work on existing houses was not known.

Cabinet member for housing, Richard Kerry, said it was "without doubt going to be a considerable expense".

The Conservative councillor stressed refusal was only for the time being, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In September, the council's Scrutiny Committee asked for the number of council houses built to be reviewed by commissioning a business case for 100.

But the council said it needed to focus on the programme of upgrades to the existing 4,500 council homes to make them net carbon-zero.

Mr Kerry said: "The level of work and investment required in this is not yet fully understood.

"The work is under way to try and understand the true scale and costs of this issue."

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The Cabinet said the expense and officer time spent on preparing a business plan for increased council housebuilding, which the cabinet would then reject, would not be productive.

Labour councillor Mike Deacon said there were 400 families in Felixstowe waiting for those homes.

"We owe it to those families across the district to at least look into a business plan to solve the problem," he said.

Liberal Democrat councillor David Beavan said the Conservative-led council had not kept "their promises" over increasing the number of council houses.