SPECIAL meetings are to be held for community leaders to give their views on proposals for sites for 1,620 new homes in Felixstowe, Walton and the twin Trimley villages.

SPECIAL meetings are to be held for community leaders to give their views on proposals for sites for 1,620 new homes in Felixstowe, Walton and the twin Trimley villages.

Planners are asking the public for their views on five potential greenfield sites - none of them large enough to take all the housing needed as one development.

In addition to the 1,620, there will be around 300 homes on other urban sites, and 180 built which have already been given planning permission - providing the area with 2,100 new homes over the next 15 years.

Parish and town councils, conservation groups, landowners, agents, campaigners and residents have eight weeks to give their views.

Felixstowe Town Council is to hold an extraordinary meeting on March 11 at 7.30pm in Walton Community Hall to decide its response.

Town clerk Susan Robinson said: “We have already given our general views on the future needs of the area and the housing expansion we believe will be necessary. Now we will look at the options of where that housing could be built.”

Consultants have already warned the Felixstowe area needs 1,700 homes just to maintain its current population because of smaller households due to people living alone, marriage break-ups, children leaving home.

As well as having more people of retirement age than normal, Felixstowe needs homes to encourage families to live there, cater for port expansion and jobs this will bring, and cut down commuting.

But Felixstowe's biggest problem is it doesn't have brownfield sites available.

Two of the options - countryside in Old Felixstowe and around Gulpher Road, both controversial - would be in the town but three are in the Trimley villages.

Trimley St Martin Parish Council has decided to call a finance and general purpose meeting on February 27 with the housing options the only item on the agenda, while Trimley St Mary Parish Council will debate the issue at its March 3 meeting.

Both councils are strongly against development other than a small number of homes, mainly for elderly people and youngsters wanting to stay in the village, and will fight to ensure the villages remain as separate identities and do not become urban sprawl and lose their rural character.

Action group Save Trimley Against Growth is also preparing a response to what it calls “unnecessary and unwanted” large scale housing developments.

Where do you think the new homes should be built in Suffolk Coastal? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail EveningStarLetters@eveningstar.co.uk