Families will start moving into a new all-affordable neighbourhood on the edge of a Suffolk village before the end of October.
Flagship Homes, part of Bromford Flagship LiveWest (BFL), is building 67 homes at The Lime Kilns, a site off Ely Road in Claydon that sits between woodland and the existing estate, four miles north of Ipswich.
Tony Tann, managing director of Flagship Homes, said the first five homes would be handed over in the autumn, with the rest finished by July next year.
Mr Tann said: “There’s a real need for affordable housing in this part of Suffolk, and 67 homes in a village this size makes a difference.”
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Of the homes, 42 will be let at affordable rent, around 80% of market rates, and allocated to families on the local council waiting list. The other 25 will be for shared ownership, a hybrid between buying and renting which makes it easier to get onto the housing ladder.
The first five homes to be ready will all be bungalows. One is for shared ownership and the rest are for affordable rent.
Mr Tann said: “We’ve started with the bungalows deliberately. There’s a lot of demand for single-storey homes around here and not nearly enough of them get built, so it made sense to get those out of the ground first.”
Ipswich-based Aspen Build is the principal contractor on the project, which has been part-funded by Homes England.
As the site off Ely Road straddles parish boundaries, only 17 of the homes will officially be in Claydon while the other 50 will be in neighbouring Barham.
Every home is timber-framed, with the frames made in a factory and put together on site. That speeds up the build and gives a tighter, better sealed shell, which means less heat leaking out once people move in.
Each home also comes with an air source heat pump and an electric vehicle charging point, and the properties are expected to achieve EPC A ratings.
The development takes its name from the lime kilns that once worked in the area. The Gipping valley is one of the places where Suffolk’s chalk comes close to the surface, and for well over a century the village burned it for lime, alongside a scatter of chalk pits and a whiting works.
