HOUSEBUILDING levels are on the up, but still only produce half the homes needed each year in the district, a new regeneration report shows.

And while developers are eagerly building in outlying areas like Apperley Bridge, they are more reluctant to build homes in the inner city, it says.

Around 2,200 new homes are needed each year to keep up with demand, according to council figures, but only around half this amount - 1,134 homes - were built in 2014/15.

While this is more than were built the year before, it is still "well below" the levels seen before the 2008 financial crash, the council report says.

The report, by Bradford Council's regeneration director Mike Cowlam, says Apperley Bridge and Queensbury have proved to be "hotspots" for developers in 2015, particularly with Apperley Bridge getting a new railway station.

But it is a different story for inner-city Bradford, the report says, which remains "challenging in terms of scheme viability, especially in the case of brownfield sites".

However, Councillor Val Slater, Bradford Council's executive member for housing and planning, said there had been an "encouraging" uplift in schemes coming forward for city-centre homes in the first few months of 2016.

She said: "We have certainly seen an upturn in applications and interest, really since The Broadway opened."

The opposition Conservative spokesman for planning, Councillor Martin Smith, had a different take on the situation.

He said it was the council's housebuilding targets which needed to come down, rather than the number of new homes being built needing to go up.

Cllr Smith said while the council's Local Plan called for 42,000 new homes to be built by 2030, the district only needed half that.

He said: "The targets are wrong. The targets are completely wrong and everybody except the council understands that."

Cllr Smith said the targets had been based on an estimated number of new jobs that had since been dramatically reduced, and the district only really needed around 21,000 homes.

But Cllr Slater branded this "nonsense", saying the target was based on government figures and had been examined by a planning inspector, who had not raised any problem with it.

The report says Bradford Council is also making good headway in bringing empty homes back into use.

A total of 5,231 long-term vacant properties were brought back into use in 2015, but around 4,000 remain empty.

In some cases, where owners are proving uncooperative, the council's Housing Service can forcibly buy up empty homes. Since 2010, the service had compulsory-purchased 11 homes and voluntary bought 22 more. A further 26 cases are in the pipeline.

The report will be discussed at a meeting of the regeneration and economy overview and scrutiny committee on Wednesday, April 13.