‘If Briarwood development goes ahead it would make a mockery of GP11’ says ESS
ALLOWING the Briarwood development to go ahead would make a mockery of development policy and create a potential loophole to be exploited by developers, according to Employment & Social Security.
Committee president Peter Roffey was responding on its behalf to a report on proposed changes to the development, which would see 26 new homes built in St Martin’s if it is approved at an open planning meeting later this month.
Under development policy GP11, 28% of new home builds must be affordable housing.
If this happened at Briarwood, seven of the planned 26 homes would have to be affordable. This, it is argued, would make the project unviable.
Deputy Roffey said that this suggested too much may have been paid for the site in the first place.
‘This brings me to question why the calculation for affordable housing is the last one to be done when assessing the financial viability of a development. It ultimately means that if costs are unreasonable elsewhere in the project, then affordable housing will suffer. The committee considers that this kind of loophole for developers to avoid meeting the obligation to provide affordable housing on larger sites is unacceptable, and makes a mockery of the intention behind Policy GP11.’
The committee would like the Development & Planning Agency to take a close look at the price paid for the land.
ESS also wondered if a higher density development could be considered which would improve the project’s financial viability while enabling some affordable housing on the site.
The location would be perfect for key workers, ‘being just a short walk from the Princess Elizabeth Hospital’, and was also close to the shops and amenities of St Martin’s, which would suit families.
The assessor who provided an independent report to the original open planning meeting has commented further in the addendum report and said that if the cost of land was low enough to allow for the 20% profit on costs there would be little or no incentive to sell it.
‘For the full allocation of affordable housing to be provided, land values would be required to have a negative value.
‘The independent assessor reiterates their original conclusions that the application of a full or even partial Policy GP11 requirement in addition to this would negatively impact the development to a point it is not considered to be viable.’
And it said the idea of increasing the density of the development would likely increase concerns of those opposed to the development in the first place.
‘The proposed density already marginally exceeds the density anticipated in the approved development framework and there are concerns that a substantial increase in the density of the development would not respect the character of the area,’ they said.
