Housing minister announces sites for 30,000 new homes by 2035

Housing minister Eleanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan has identified five new sites around the country to build 30,000 new homes by 2035.

The five urban locations in Friesland, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Limburg have been designated National Large-Scale Housing Locations (NGWs) as part of the cabinet’s plans to build 400,000 houses in the next 10 years.

Between 5,000 and 6,000 homes are planned at four of the sites in Haarlem, Deventer, Weert and Leeuwarden, while 8,000 houses are due to be built in Maastricht. All the sites apart from Haarlem are close to main railway stations.

The sites are the first to be identified by the current government under the NGW scheme, a €5 billion fund first announced in 2023 to speed up development in urban areas and relieve the pressure on housing.

It takes the total number of NGW areas to 26. However, last month plans to develop four sites nominated by the previous housing minister, Mona Keijzer, had to be put on hold because there was no money to build road and railway connections.

Boekholt-O’Sullivan said in a letter to parliament that the locations had been chosen because they could be easily connected to services such as water and electricity, allowing the areas to be developed quickly.

“In choosing these five new NGW locations we explicitly looked at locations where no extra measures are needed for availability to realise these homes,” she said. “That means we can use our joint efforts to realise new neighbourhoods at speed.”