Ipswich City’s population has surpassed the 265,000 mark as Ripley leads the way as the city’s fastest growing suburb.
Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding says they are experiencing a large influx of new residents as shown in council’s planning and regulatory services annual report card.
“The city’s population grew by 3.5% to 265,854 in the 12 months to June 30 (last financial year) as more than 9000 people moved to Ipswich over the 2024-2025 financial year,” she says.
The city attracted 8184 new residents in the 2023-24 financial year and 6228 in 2022-23.
“Ripley topped the list (of) fastest growing suburbs with 649 new dwellings and 2024 new residents over 12 months, followed by Spring Mountain (523 new dwellings and 1597 new residents).”
Harding says the other top five growing suburbs are Redbank Plains, South Ripley and White Rock.
“… our population remains on track to increase to more than 500,000 by 2046,” she says.
“We are getting on with this job; (there were) 3169 new dwellings across the city in 2024-2025, an increase of 8.1% on the previous year.”
‘IPSWICH HAS ROOM FOR GROWTH’
Council’s 2025-2026 Budget is allocating $165 million in capital works, which is due to grow to nearly $200m in 2026-27 and $211m the year after, she explains.
Harding also says they will continue to push state and federal governments for traffic measures like a public transport corridor between Ipswich and Springfield Central, a second inner-city Bremer River crossing and upgrade work to major arterial roads.
Infrastructure and planning committee chairman Councillor Andrew Antoniolli says Ipswich’s growth will continue.
“Across 2024-25, 2120 lots were created and 4060 lots approved by council,” he says.
This put council in a strong position to supply housing even with new measures to encourage infill development, dual occupancy and higher density housing now in ‘play’, he adds.
“There was a 30.3% increase in development applications lodged and a 10.8% increase in development applications determined compared to the previous year,” Cr Antoniolli says.
The councillor says his committee’s own quarterly report card up to June 30 shows an extra 2098 people called Ipswich home.
“Council also responded to 20,862 customer requests for regulatory services in 2024-25, a 20.8% rise on the previous year – including illegal parking, illegal dumping, abandoned vehicles, unregistered dogs and overgrown private properties.”
The annual report card also revealed there were 3850 new clinic immunisations, 36,432 dog registrations, 35.94km of new pathways/bikeways, 26.24km of new roads and 1.13ha of more parkland.
Click here for more: $4m given to fund study into new bridge
