SWINDON Borough Council opened its doors to small and medium sized house builders yesterday as it looks to find new ways of delivering on its ambitious housing target.

Some 22,000 new homes need to be built by 2026 to keep up with demand and the economic growth of Swindon.

Many will be delivered by volume house builders in outer expansion schemes such as the New Eastern Villages, but those areas alone won’t meet the requirement.

Instead, the council needs to attract greater interest from the small or medium sized house building sector to deliver more carefully targeted developments in urban sites and other locations earmarked for housing.

Representatives from these firms were invited to Steam on Friday to hear from council representatives, property experts and fellow developers.

Launching the event, Toby Elliott, the council’s cabinet member for strategic planning, said: “Bricks and mortar are far more that just the sum of their parts. They can become a home and that’s what we’re all about.

“We’re passionate about delivering the homes that Swindon needs. We’ve got a very ambitious target - we need to build 1,600 homes per year, every year.

“We need homes for young people trying to get onto the housing market for the first time, homes for hard working nurses, social workers and members of our armed forces.

“We need homes for those that want to downsize but stay in a community that they love – also homes for the senior executives of the many great businesses we have in Swindon who currently don’t reside here.”

Coun Elliott argued the housing market had been dominated by a small number of large volume house builders for too long.

“They will build the same thing whether in Penzance or Perth,” he added. “We need to diversify. Swindon needs better.”

Forward Swindon’s chief executive Deborah Heenan outlined the vision for a regenerated town centre with £350m of investment aiming to deliver new business space, housing and a more attractive leisure and retail offering.

Estate agent Richard James encouraged the house builders to embrace a property market he said was under valued and well positioned to offer an impressive return on investment.

Chris Brotherton, land and sales director at Thomas Homes, told the turnaround tale of the Old Railway Quarter adjacent to Steam. After trying times at the height of the financial crash, the project was ultimately delivered with commercial success and great interest from the public.

He urged other companies to make Swindon their next destination to experience similar good fortunes themselves.