PLANS to build new council houses in Colchester have been put on the backburner as new government protocol sees in a slash in the budget for the next 40 years.

In July the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out plans to decrease social housing rents by one per cent annually from 2016/17 for the next four years.

This defecit means Colchester Council will lose £10 million over the next four years and a staggering £143 million for the next 30 years.

The council’s portfolio holder for housing Tina Bourne said she is devastated at the consequences of the cuts which would mean a knock-on effect for the services the council can provide.

She said: “We have 6,500 properties that Colchester Council is the landlord of and our management company is Colchester Borough Homes.

“We firmly believe in having our own housing stock.

“Although the rent decrease seems to be great news for out tenants it will only actually impact one third of our tenants who pay the full rent.

“The new rules have taken £10 million of our budget in the business plan for the next four years and £143 million off for the next 30 years.

“We are devastated because we are pride ourselves on being the best landlords we can be in that our stock is constantly being updated.

“Last year we built the first 34 council houses in the borough for more than 20 years – brand-spanking new, beautiful properties.

“The next phase was for between 12 and 20 more but it is now very unlikely it will be able to happen.

“This does not help any of the 4,000 people who are currently on our housing needs register.”

Mrs Bourne said plans to improve sheltered housing sites to make them more attractive to elderly residents, and in turn free up further space would also have to be revised.

“We have spent £6 million refurbishing two sheltered housing sites and taking them from bedsits to flats.

“This was so elderly tenants feel they want to release their two or three bedroom housing to move into the accommodation.

“Our next move is to renovate two more sites in Wivenhoe but because of the reductions we will still be going ahead but they will not be as high as specification.

“We will still carry on with our programme of improvements but we will have to put some of those back a bit.

“On top of that we have got the Right to Buy announcement that means we have to sell off high quality council properties.

“We have got some housing stock which were built before 1900 which would raise the most money.

“Not only are we going to not be building, we are actually going to be losing stock.

“We cannot currently have all the changes and the council will have to employ three people to manage it.”

Mrs Bourne said she needed to be brutally honest about the changes in order to be fair on all residents.

She said: “My concern is that it is quite difficult to see how we can offer any hope to people who are on the housing needs register.

“I am not going to pretend it is good because it is not but we will do what we can to help people.

“I am sure people will be unhappy and I am certainly not happy.”