Crawley Borough Council has agreed to spend another £700,000 on a housing development that will deliver ‘dozens’ of council homes.
But it won’t say which development is involved or how much money has already gone towards the building work.
The money was approved during a meeting of the full council on Wednesday (March 26).
Leader Michael Jones said: “The council is bringing forward as much council housing as is possible for us to achieve in order to address the housing emergency that we have, and get more of our families and our households on the waiting list into housing.
“As a result, one of our developments has been identified as needing an additional £700,000 to allow the entire scheme to be built.”
The amount was described as ‘a relatively modest increase’ by Mr Jones, who added that it made up ‘a fairly small proportion’ of the overall cost of the project.
The development is being built by a private company and the new homes will be bought by the council once complete.
A council spokesperson said there were still a lot of contract negotiations going on, which was why no details were available. They added: “This money will help future-proof the housing so it will be less likely to need to update them in a few years time.”
Conservative leader Duncan Crow said of the amount of money put in by the council when the scheme was conceived a couple of years ago: “It clearly has proved not to be enough. We do need to get these things right. Of course I appreciate that getting this scheme done means we will hopefully have less people in temporary accommodation … but the fact [is] that we have arrived at a situation where really we don’t have much choice but to support it.
“I do ask that the cabinet get a better grip of schemes coming forward in future so that costs do not escalate and that when those schemes are agreed they are realistic amounts that are being tabled.”
Mr Jones accused Mr Crow of taking ‘a cheap shot’, while Sue Mullins, cabinet member for community engagement & culture, reminded him that the cost of materials and labour had ‘gone through the roof’.
Ian Irvine, cabinet member for housing, said: “The great shame of this really is we can’t actually talk about the developments themselves. If we could, then the people of Crawley would know what would be at risk if we didn’t make available this extra £700,000. For the sake of £700,000 we would be losing a great deal.”
As of November 2024, there were more than 2,500 household on the council’s housing register, most of whom would have to wait years for an offer of a home.
Mr Jones said that the homes the council would receive from the development would save tens of thousands of pounds per family per year keeping people out of temporary housing.
He added: “I am mindful of the human cost of having children in temporary accommodation. This is money that’s well worth spending.”
