A COUNCIL decision this week will put a commitment to affordable housing in Swanage to the test.
Councillors deferred a decision in January on a 30-home scheme for the former St Mary’s School site after developers asked to remove 11 affordable homes from the project – claiming their inclusion would make the scheme financial unviable.
Several councillors said they wanted the homes – even if it meant the developers walking away from the project and sent council officers to re-negotiate.
Those talks have now been held and come to the same conclusion – that unless the 11 affordable properties are removed the profit will not be enough for banks to finance the scheme.
A meeting of Dorset Council’s eastern area planning committee on Wednesday (9th) will be asked to accept the facts and approve the removal of the 11 affordable homes.
A report to the committee says that the developers have now bought the site, losing the opportunity to negotiate on the price, and have said that unless profits are at least 15per cent of the gross development value the banks will not offer finance.
“The applicant states that members are asked to accept the professional recommendation provided by their own expert and independent consultant that the conclusion of the appraisal is sound,” said a report to the committee.
The January meeting resulted in a two-hour debate on the subject before deciding to defer.
Cllr David Tooke said at the meeting that the nub of the argument was the definition of ‘viable’.
He said his reading of the figures provided by the developer was the difference between a profit of £830,000 with the affordable homes on site and £1.98m in profit if they were not included.
But council officers argued that the figures were not necessarily clear profit with independent experts agreeing that the scheme would not be viable, under the Government’s agreed definition, if the affordable homes were retained.
Cllr Alex Brenton said she was prepared to see the developer walk away from the scheme if it genuinely believed it was not worth their while to include the affordable homes.
She said that providing affordable homes was increasingly important across Dorset, more so in town like Swanage, where there were many second and holiday homes, with prices rising so fast that local people were being pushed out of the market.
The committee heard evidence from one resident, a professional woman in her 40s, who was still living with her parents because she could not afford to buy in the town. She urged the committee to reject the developer’s plea to allow the removal of the affordable homes from the legal agreement made when the scheme was given consent
Bracken Developments say the housing project at the former St Mary’s School site in Manor Road will not be financially viable if they have to provide the 'affordable' homes which were agreed at the time the original consent was granted in 2018.
Ten of the homes for the site will be created by converting former school buildings – the remaining 20 as new builds.
Swanage town council said it was "frustrated and disappointed" by the application to remove the affordable homes and warned that, if allowed, it would be detrimental to the local housing market and future schemes.
Local councillors Bill Trite and Gary Suttle both objected to the proposed change in the agreement arguing that the circumstances have not materially change since the application was submitted and that the so-called ‘abnormal’ costs of developing the brownfield site should have been foreseen by a professional developer.
Cllr Trite said the company’s claim that it will have to find £346,700 in "abnormal costs" to develop the site made no sense and should have been foreseen when they first applied for planning permission. He said that the decision was a test about how serious Dorset Council was with its declared aim to support affordable housing in the county.
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