Crawley Borough Council has been allocated £3.854m from the government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund.
The news was shared by leader Michael Jones during a meeting of the full council on Wednesday (October 16).
Thanking officers for their work in securing the money, Mr Jones said it would be used to prepare three brownfield sites for housing.
One of those will be the demolition and redevelopment of the old town hall, in The Bouelvard.
The plan had been to build a ten-storey block of 182 flats with ground-floor commercial space, looking out onto a public square.
But the site has been in limbo since the council’s partner Westrock withdrew from the project.
The other two sites will be at Longley House, in East Park, and the Deerswood Court garages.
Plans for 121 flats in a block up to nine storeys high were approved for the Longley House site in November 2020.
And last October the council held two public consultations about its plans to demolish the 52 Deerswood Court garages and replace them with 18 modular homes.
Mr Jones said: “This fund will assist in the delivery of about 270 new homes across these three sites.
“At least 150 of these – well over half – are destined to be affordable homes.
“That proportion could be much higher by the end of the process – and a very significant number of them will be council houses for our residents on our local waiting list.”
Demolition work is expected to start by the end of March 2025.
