Thousands of people in need of social housing in Colchester could be waiting as long as 50 years for a home, a councillor has claimed.

Responding to questions from the opposition, Councillor Julie Young (Labour, Greenstead) said housing all 3,009 households on Colchester Council’s housing register could take decades due to the rate at which new council houses are being built and sold.

The council debated and approved its new housing strategy at a meeting, which sets out its intentions for housing over the next five years.

This strategy includes priorities to increase the supply of affordable homes in the borough and prevent homeless, and has cross-party support.

At the meeting, Conservative Councillor Dennis Willetts (Lexenden and Braiswick) asked how long would it take to reduce the number of people on the housing register to as close to zero as possible.

He said: “I believe that is one of the crucial tests of a really good housing strategy, does it ensure that we reduce homelessness to a maximum that we can actually achieve, all accepting that we’re never going to be perfect and get it down to zero.”

Cllr Young said: “It isn’t a waiting list, as we talked about at scrutiny, it’s a register and at the moment anybody can join that register.

“You asked about how long it would take to actually accommodate everyone, well if it stays as it is I work out we’ll be on this for about 50 years, because in 2019 I think we built somewhere in the region of 106 homes and [in 2019] we sold 46, so you can imagine that’s a long road ahead to actually accommodate all the people on that register.”

According to the strategy, a total of 741 new homes were built in Colchester in the year 2020-2021. 101 of these were affordable homes and 59 were bought by the council, but 46 were sold under the Right to Buy scheme.

Since the council’s local plan was adopted earlier this month, at least 30 per cent of the houses in new developments will have to be affordable homes.

The strategy says the council will continue to partner with Homes England and the council’s house building programme will provide a mix of housing types and sizes to meet the range of households on the register, including wheelchair accessible homes.

It will also work in partnership with developers, housing associations and charities to maximise the supply of affordable housing on new developments, the strategy continues.