One of the government's most eye-catching targets is to see a million new homes built a year to address the housing crisis.

But the experience we are seeing in Suffolk as a whole and in the Ipswich area in particular suggests it doesn't have a clue about the complexity behind that apparently simple statement!

In the north west Ipswich area - including communities just outside the town like Claydon, Barham and Blakenham - we have seen a monumental failure by the NHS which has left thousands of people with inadequate primary care.

When I talk about NHS failure, I am not talking about the Cardinal Medical Practice whose doctors, nurses, support staff and administrators work heroically despite the lousy hand dealt to them by the bureaucrats at the Suffolk and North Essex Integrated Care Board (or whatever acronym the NHS is using this year).

Over the last four years, four GP practices have been been merged and patients' facilities have been squeezed into two surgeries.

It is now the largest practice in Ipswich in terms of patient numbers - but everything was going to be fine because it was moving into a new super-surgery on the Tooks site which should be completed by next year.

However after years of incompetence and indecision by the NHS in Suffolk those plans have now been scrapped and despite Olympic-standard hand-wringing the patients are facing years of dedicated professionals dealing with them in totally inadequate facilities.

I'm really, really hacked off with the NHS in Suffolk over this. I am one of the patients affected and it does feel as if they're consigning thousands of us to a third class primary-care service.

But I'm also angry about the general government's lack of understanding about the need for investment in health in areas like this.

As well as the four existing practices, there are also thousands of new homes being built on the Ipswich Garden Suburb.

Those going up on the Henley Gate site will naturally look towards the Cardinal Medical Practice - so it is going to face even more strains.

New homes need new infrastructure and that includes health facilities, so why can't the developers be forced to contribute to the cost of the new surgery? That might have pushed it towards viability.

I do get the feeling there is no joined-up thinking about new infrastructure. Everything is looked at it in its own silo.

The NHS can only take money from the NHS. New schools, roads, water and electricity facilities all have to be ring-fenced from one another and no one is able to look at the overall needs of an area.

The absurdity of this lack of investment can be seen elsewhere in Suffolk - there's been a virtual moratorium placed on business growth in the north of the county because of a lack of water supplies.

Water provision is, of course, in the hands of privately-owned companies. But if the government doesn't want investment not-spots created by this kind of inadequate provision it has to take a strong hand.

I know it's totally unfair to blame the current government for all these problems after just 100 days in office - it is a situation that has developed over decades.

Over the last couple of years it's been especially bad as the previous government got the message it was heading for the order of the boot and seemed to lose interest in long-term planning.

One thing though, that does worry me about the present government is the talk about getting rid of red tape.

That sounds great and clearly there is a great deal of unnecessary bureaucracy - but I hope that when it does start on this crusade it will remember the Cameron government's war on red tape and what that led to with new homes and the cladding scandal. 

Like it or not, some red tape is absolutely vital!

The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of Paul Geater and do not necessarily reflect views held by this newspaper, its sister publications or its owner and publisher Newsquest Media Group Ltd.