Take a look inside new 'energy efficient' council homes which have been built in Worthing

This will enable a number of Worthing families, in need of somewhere to live, to move back to the town.

"A total of 11 new energy efficient homes have been built for Worthing Borough Council on the site of the old RAF Air Cadets prefab in Victoria Road,” a council spokesperson said.

"The project means families from Worthing who were having to be housed by the council outside the borough have been able to move closer to their friends and relatives, their jobs and their children’s schools.

"There are around 2,000 households on the housing register in Worthing and the council is having to house hundreds of local families in temporary accommodation outside the area because of a lack of suitable homes for them. This is both very expensive and also damaging for the residents’ quality of life.”

Plans to demolish and convert the site were approved in April 2025. Worthing Borough Council hoped to save £120,000 per year after plans to build 11 flats for temporary/emergency accommodation were given the green light.

After submitting the application in January, the council said it was ‘determined to tackle the housing crisis’ in the town and wanted to transform the empty brownfield site at 20-22 Victoria Road ‘to help with the issue’.

Councillor Ödül Bozkurt, Worthing’s cabinet member for housing and citizen services, said: “These great new homes will help Worthing residents back to their town to be closer to their friends, families and lives.

“Too many local families currently have to be housed outside the borough, but as a council for the community we’re working hard to secure the properties needed to bring them back home.”

The new flats in Victoria Road, close to Worthing town centre, have been built to Passivhaus standards.

This means they are ‘so well constructed, insulated and ventilated’ that they need ‘very little energy to heat or cool’, the council said.

"This means the new tenants will have far lower fuel bills,” the spokesperson added.

"The quality of workmanship and site management at the development by the council's contractor, Sunninghill, has also been recognised with a site recognition award by national insurer LABC Warranty.”

The council secured around £800,000 of funding from Homes England – the government’s national housing and regeneration agency.

This helped pay for the clearing of the site and the construction of the new homes to ‘highly sustainable standards’.

The council added: “It is estimated that bringing the Worthing tenants back to the town will save the council tens of thousands of pounds a year it would have otherwise had to spend on B&B and private accommodation outside the area.”