The government's formula wants 1,666 homes a year from East Suffolk. The district averaged 830 over 2021 to 2024. Local Plan stage, Sizewell C and the register.

Two things dominate planning on this coast, and they pull in opposite directions. One is a housing number set in Whitehall that East Suffolk has never come close to building. The other is a nuclear power station that has already been consented and is now taking up most of the district’s planning attention.

The housing number, and the gap under it

The government sets how many homes each council must plan for through a formula called the standard method. For East Suffolk that formula currently produces 1,666 homes a year.

East Suffolk annual housing need against actual delivery Bar chart comparing East Suffolk housing figures. The current outcome of the standard method is 1,666 homes a year, the most recent outcome incorporating the latest affordability ratios is 1,655, the indicative figure published in December was 1,644, the best year of delivery since 2001 was 1,318 homes and average delivery from 2021 to 2024 was 830 homes a year. The target is above anything East Suffolk has ever built in a year Homes a year. Standard method outcomes and delivery figures for East Suffolk, from Turley's analysis of the government's method, May 2025. Standard method now1,666 With latest affordability ratios1,655 December indicative figure1,644 Best year since 20011,318 Actually built, 2021 to 2024830 a year The gap between the formula and recent delivery is 836 homes a year, roughly double what the district has been managing. Even the district's best year this century, 1,318 homes, falls 348 short of the current requirement. East Suffolk covers Lowestoft and Beccles as well as this coast, so these are whole-district figures, not coastal ones.
The number matters because national policy ties a council's ability to refuse housing on unallocated sites to whether it can show five years of deliverable land against its requirement.

The comparison that matters is with what actually gets built. East Suffolk averaged 830 homes a year across 2021 to 2024. Its best year this century was 1,318. So the formula is asking for roughly double recent delivery, and more than the district has ever managed in a single year.

Two related figures from the same analysis: the indicative figure published in December was 1,644, and the most recent outcome incorporating the latest affordability ratios is 1,655. They move a little as the input data is refreshed, but not enough to change the picture.

These are whole-district numbers. East Suffolk runs from Felixstowe to Lowestoft, so a good deal of that housing will land on the Waveney side rather than on this coast. Where it lands is exactly what the new Local Plan has to decide.

The new Local Plan

East Suffolk is writing a single Local Plan to replace the two it inherited at the 2019 merger, the Suffolk Coastal plan and the Waveney one.

The council ran the first public stage, “Preparing a New Local Plan in East Suffolk”, from 10 June to 29 July 2026, on its strategic planning consultations portal. It was deliberately open-ended: the council asked residents “what matters most for the local plan to address” rather than putting sites or numbers out for comment. That consultation has now closed, and the next stage will be a draft plan with actual allocations in it.

Other planning consultations the council has run on the same portal in the past year give a fair picture of what it is dealing with:

  • Draft Major Energy Projects Workers’ Accommodation Planning Position Statement, 22 January to 26 February 2026. This is the Sizewell C question in policy form: where several thousand construction workers live, and what the council will accept when it is asked.
  • Statement of Community Involvement, 13 January to 24 February 2026, setting out how the council consults on plans and applications.
  • Saxmundham Neighbourhood Plan Review, 18 February to 1 April 2026, now complete.
  • Little Bealings Neighbourhood Plan, open from 1 July to 26 August 2026.
  • Neighbourhood area amendments for Melton (29 October to 10 December 2025) and Martlesham (12 December 2025 to 6 February 2026).

The neighbourhood plans matter more here than in most districts. Where a parish has an adopted plan it has some say over where housing goes; where it does not, that is settled entirely by the Local Plan and by appeal decisions.

Sizewell C

The largest planning consent ever granted on this coast is being built out now. The Planning Inspectorate’s record for the Sizewell C Project, applicant Sizewell C Limited, near Leiston, is unambiguous: the development consent order was granted on 20 July 2022. It is a post-decision nuclear generating station application, which means the arguments about whether it happens are over.

The final investment decision followed on 22 July 2025, at a capital cost of around £38 billion in 2024 prices. The shareholding, from the project’s own announcement, is the UK government at 44.9%, La Caisse at 20%, Centrica at 15%, EDF at 12.5% and Amber Infrastructure at 7.6% initially. The project claims 10,000 direct jobs at peak, up to 60,000 in the supply chain, 1,500 apprenticeships, and enough electricity for “the equivalent of six million homes for at least 60 years”.

For anyone living between Woodbridge and Southwold, the planning consequences are already on the ground rather than on paper: a link road, a two-village bypass on the A12, two park and ride sites, a rail route and a construction campus, with road closures running to 2027. Those are set out on our roadworks and travel page.

What is in the register this week

East Suffolk publishes every application as it is validated on its public access planning register. In the week beginning 3 August 2026, the coastal half of the district produced a list that is mostly small:

  • Land at Park Farm, Loudham Hall Road, Loudham, near Woodbridge: discharge of condition 24 on DC/21/5550/FUL, the 21 MW solar array consented there. The panels are fixed-mount rather than tracking. This is the largest scheme in the week’s list by a distance.
  • Garland Park, Garland Park Avenue, Rendlesham: a consultation on varying the licence of Advanced Water Infrastructure Networks Limited so it can supply water and sewerage services to the site.
  • Ufford Stocks, Church Lane, Ufford: listed building consent to alter the existing stocks and whipping post, DC/26/2745/LBC.
  • Everything else that week was tree work under conservation area or preservation order rules, at addresses in Felixstowe, Framlingham, Aldeburgh and Dunwich.

That mix is typical. On this coast a normal planning week is trees, extensions and conditions, with the substantial decisions arriving occasionally and the very large ones going to national infrastructure consent rather than the council at all.

Where these figures come from

Standard method and delivery figures are from Turley’s May 2025 analysis of the outcome of the standard method, published as a national table by local authority, covering the current standard method outcome, the December indicative figure, the outcome with the latest affordability ratios, delivery from 2021 to 2024 and peak delivery since 2001. Local Plan and consultation dates are from East Suffolk Council’s own consultations portal. Sizewell C’s consent date is from the Planning Inspectorate’s project record, and the investment decision detail from the project’s own announcement. Applications are from the council’s public access register.

One thing we could not check: East Suffolk’s own planning pages, including its housing land supply statements, sit behind a bot-verification challenge that blocks automated access, so nothing on this page is taken from them.

More local information: house prices, trains to London, roadworks and travel and things to do in Woodbridge.