Thousands more homes must be built to safeguard Middlesbrough’s future and help tackle a predicted budget black hole of £145m by 2020.
That was the stark message from Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon today as he warned: “Middlesbrough Council must be self financing like we have never been before.”
To help achieve this the mayor wants to see 7,500 new homes built on greenfield sites like Nunthorpe and Marton as well as brownfield sites by 2029 - an average of 440 per year.
The mayor told a special meeting of the authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Board that “our best friend now is housing developers”.
“They will help us sustain Middlesbrough,” he said.
At the round table discussion at the Riverside Stadium, which included leaders of partner agencies and key stakeholders, the mayor said Chancellor George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review speech in 2010 continued to impacted on the council’s finances.
He said it had been estimated the authority needed to save between £121m-£145m between 2011/12 and 2019/20.
The mayor then set out his strategy on how the authority can increase income into the town, including by reversing the population decline.
This would see an increase in the Government formula grant, which is paid per head of population.
“It isn’t jobs that bring people into the area, what brings people into this town to live is houses,” he said. “If we haven’t got houses they cant live here.
“We did not build the right kind of houses as a council so people moved away to places like Ingleby Barwick to get a better house.
“We need to re-balance housing and we need to get more band D housing. We have got to bring more council tax into the town.”
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