Housing development
The role of the Strategic Housing Team is to promote and facilitate the provision of new housing throughout West Suffolk. We work with a range of partners such as registered providers, housing associations, private developers and parish councils. We aim to ensure that the housing and in particular the affordable housing, required within our planning policies and housing strategy, is delivered.
Affordable housing is traditionally homes provided for people on lower incomes who are unable to meet their housing needs through the general housing market. Affordable housing in West Suffolk is predominately developed by registered providers, who focus primarily on the delivery of affordable homes for rent, such as social and affordable rent and affordable home ownership products such as shared ownership.
Our policies
The local plan for West Suffolk 2024 - 2041 was adopted on 15 July 2025. This forms part of the development plan for West Suffolk and supersedes any previously adopted local plan documents.
The National Planning Policy Framework states that affordable housing shall only be required for sites of 0.5ha and over or for 10 dwellings and over.
Policy SP16 Affordable Housing, requires the following levels of affordable housing provision:
- on greenfield sites 40 per cent of the homes shall be affordable.
- on brownfield sites 30 per cent of the homes shall be affordable.
The tenure requirement for West Suffolk is 67 per cent affordable homes for rent (with a preference for social rent) and 33 per cent affordable home ownership (with a preference for shared ownership). Detailed guidance on delivering affordable housing within West Suffolk can be found within the Affordable housing supplementary planning document (SPDs) 2019.
The council recommends early engagement with the Housing Strategy Team regarding the affordable housing provision, in order to discuss the required tenure and mix of the affordable housing to be delivered on site. Failure to do this may result in a delay of the planning application approval process. The Strategic Housing Team uses robust data sourced from the Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk Housing Needs for Specific Groups report, West Suffolk Housing evidence base update 2024 and the local authority housing register.
The local plan will also consider small scale developments of affordable housing not identified within the local plan and sitting outside the development boundary that would normally be an exception to policy. This type of scheme is known as a rural exception scheme and is typically small-scale development of affordable housing brought forward to meet recognised local need in those villages.
Our priorities
West Suffolk Council’s Housing, Homelessness Reduction and Rough Sleeping Strategy adopted in December 2024 identifies the following priorities, for the delivery of housing within the District.
- Priority One – Preventing homelessness and rough sleeping and responding to diverse needs.
- Priority Two – Better quality homes; safe and secure and matched to need.
- Priority Three – New homes; affordable, sustainable and accessible.
Priority Three – New homes; affordable, sustainable and accessible captures the following actions:
- Work in partnership with registered providers and partners to develop formal agreements, to facilitate system working at the earliest possible stage when delivering new housing schemes, regeneration plans and management of existing housing stock.
- Engage with the community, partners and developers to explore the potential benefits and options for increasing supply of housing and sustainable growth, including along our key corridors.
- To undertake a best practice evaluation which explores and identifies options for the Council to increase delivery of affordable housing which best meets our existing and future needs.
- To investigate and review the range of new and emerging housing models and how they could be implemented to maximise the types of housing delivered in West Suffolk to meet future housing need. For example, we will work with partners, communities and developers to take forward pilots on sites such as custom and self-build, community land trusts, modular housing and ‘build to rent’ schemes.
General information
Cambridgeshire Insight is a shared research knowledge base for the Cambridgeshire, Peterborough and the West Suffolk area and provides data on demographic profiling, census information as well as interactive reports and data tools.
If you require further information on local housing needs specific to West Suffolk or a particular village, please contact the team.
Homes England, the government’s housing and regeneration agency, has recently launched the Social and Affordable Homes Programme. Spanning 10 years this programme provides routes to funding for delivery of affordable homes additional to those provided through developer contributions.
Contact the team
If you would like to discuss affordable housing delivery in more detail, or are a parish council interested in bringing forward an exception scheme in your village, please contact the team.
Email: Housing.development@westsuffolk.gov.uk
Phone: 01284 776230