Slough is ‘nowhere near’ being able to provide the amount of new homes needed, council planners have said – with a particular shortage of traditional family homes.

A lack of suitable places to build new homes means almost  6,000 fewer homes will be built than the amount that’s needed to meet demand over the next 17 years.

Planning officer Howard Albertini said that meant Slough Borough Council was ‘nowhere near’ meeting the need for new homes. He added that the council ‘can’t see a way’ of meeting the need in the future.

Slough Borough Council estimates that some 14,552 new homes will need to be built between now and 2041. But it predicts that only 8,571 new homes are on course to be built. That’s a difference of 5,981 homes.

That’s according to a recently-published council report on development in the borough. It says the shortfall is mainly down to ‘the shortage of suitable land in Slough, as the borough is small and already highly urbanised’.

The report paints a picture of a growing housing crisis in Slough. It says that Slough is one of the most overcrowded and densely built-up areas of the country.

Each person in Slough has on average 27.2 square metres of space in their home compared to 36.5 square metres in other towns and cities.

The borough’s population grew by 13 per cent in the decade between 2011 and 2021 – 158,500, up from 140,200. That’s a far greater increase than the national average of 6.6 per cent.

And it says that as Slough also has one of the youngest populations in the country, there will be a high proportion of ‘young families who will need new homes in the future’.

The report also says there is a ‘significant need for affordable housing’ and for a wide-range of different types of homes – ‘in particular family housing and homes with gardens’.

However it says the recent trend was for new homes in Slough to be overwhelmingly flats, and few of them fell into the ‘affordable housing’ category.

Of the 827 new homes built in Slough between April 2023 and April 2024, just 64 were affordable housing. And 91 per cent of those new homes were flats and maisonettes – matching similar proportions since 2019.

The council says this is partly down to its policy of directing development to town centre and other urban areas ‘where flats are generally more acceptable’. Relaxed planning rules making it easier to convert offices blocks into flats have also contributed to this.

However the report also says that while it tries to make sure new development in the suburbs is mainly family housing, ‘the need for family homes is not being met as well as that for small homes.’ It adds: “The need for traditional family homes is being met even less.”