Nearly 20 years after the former Tooks Bakery on Old Norwich Road in Ipswich closed down, the first new homes are starting to appear on the site.

Ipswich Star: Work is now under way building new homes for rent on the site of the former Tooks Bakery on Old Norwich Road in Ipswich. Picture: NEIL MACDONALDWork is now under way building new homes for rent on the site of the former Tooks Bakery on Old Norwich Road in Ipswich. Picture: NEIL MACDONALD (Image: Archant)

The new development is of 60 homes for rent that are being built for Ipswich Council's Handford Homes development arm by local company Gipping Construction.

Work started on the site in February, and now the skeleton of the first new homes are starting to appear. The first tenants are due to move in during the summer of 2020.

These pictures were taken by Ipswich Council's portfolio holder for housing Neil Macdonald, who said they showed how well the project was developing.

He said: "It's brilliant that we can finally see something happening on that site after 20 years of being just an empty plot. It will be great to see people moving in from the middle of 2020."

Ipswich Star: Neil Macdonald . Picture: IPSWICH BOROUGH COUNCILNeil Macdonald . Picture: IPSWICH BOROUGH COUNCIL

Once they are built, 41 of the new homes will be added to the borough's housing stock to be offered as council homes to families at the top of its waiting list.

The other 19 will be offered at a market rent by Handford Lettings, another company owned by the borough council, and will be offered to those on the council's waiting list who are able to afford a market rent for their home.

Handford Homes chair Colin Kreidewolf was delighted to see the progress on the new homes: "That site has been waiting a long time for redevelopment, but now everything is going very well.

"I'm receiving monthly reports from our officers on the progress being made and it really is coming along well. The work is on schedule and within budget - and this is very important work for us.

"We hope the first tenants might be in during the late spring next year and then the homes will gradually be completed like they were in Bader Close."

The cost of the homes should be £9.5m. The site next to the new homes has been earmarked for a new "super surgery" for the Whitton and Whitehouse areas replacing the Deben Road and Chesterfield Drive Surgeries.

However funding for this project, which is also expected to cost about £9.5m, has still not been signed off by local NHS bodies and there is no starting date fixed for work on this project which the borough believes could transform primary healthcare for people in that area of north west Ipswich.