A target to get 250 new council houses built in Norwich within the next five years and 100 empty homes brought back into use will today be set by leaders at City Hall.

With just over 4,800 people on the waiting list for social housing in Norwich, council leaders are keen to get more housing available for them.

Norwich City Council recently agreed to build the first new council houses in the city for the best part of two decades.

Almost 50 would be at the Three Score site, in Bowthorpe, as part of a £4.7m project, with seven more at Pointers Field, off Aylsham Road and a further three at Riley Close in Heartsease.

But, at a meeting of the city council's cabinet this evening, a new strategy for housing will set targets for even more council homes to be built.

The strategy includes a target to get 250 council homes built by 2018, as well as getting 100 empty homes brought back into use.

Brenda Arthur, leader of Norwich City Council, said: 'Jobs and housing are extremely important to us and it is vital that people can have a choice of where they live.

'It's essential that we improve the stock we have to help those who are living in fuel poverty and that we get new homes built.

'Getting empty homes back into use is important as well and we have been looking into innovative ways to do that.' There are about 500 long-term empty private homes in Norwich and the council last year launched a community scheme, teaming up with charity St Martin's Housing Trust where homeowners could get improvement work done in return for the property being let to the housing trust to provide housing.

Three times in the past two years, the city council has also used compulsory purchase orders to seize long-term empty homes from owners.

Those properties are then sold at auction and returned to use as homes.

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