BEAVERBANK PLACE – PLANS LODGED FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Beaverbank Place LLP (BP) seeks consent to replace warehouses and empty land at 29–30 Beaverbank Place with 41 flats in two blocks of 5 and 4 storeys (Ref. 13/03575/FUL). The deadline for comments is 2 October.

The plan entails ‘much needed’ mid-market 1-bedroom (14) and 2-bedroom (27) flats for rental, operated by the Dunedin Canmore Housing Association by late 2014.

Additional ‘public realm’ is proposed in front of one block, which will be set back from the road.

Potential private communal space in the development is constrained by the site's narrow footprint and the need for 13 car parking spaces (too few occupying too much?). The proposed back green is therefore very narrow and overlooked.

Council advice from the Planning Department says providing a pedestrian link to Broughton Rd Park – for which BP would fund piffling enhancements – might compensate for this lack of garden. But one wonders how many normally minded adults would find this alternative sufficiently private or desirable.

Setting aside reservations over the design, (which, at first glance, appears mostly dull but inoffensive), Spurtle warmly welcomes regeneration of this site.

We also see some merit in the scheme’s ‘Resonance funding model’. Originally formulated by Rettie & Co., it is aimed at ‘key workers’ (earning £10,000–36,000 per year) who currently struggle to join the housing ladder. At some unspecified future date, tenants – in up to three-quarters of the flats – would be given first option to buy their homes before the properties were offered for sale on the open market.

These rules would be enforced under a Section 75 clause agreed by the developer with CEC as a condition of consent. Similar arrangements have attracted development finance in Edinburgh recently at a time when borrowing is difficult. Such new homes would probably not be built otherwise in the current economic climate.

The apparent suddenness of this plan's presentation has caught some by surprise. However, it required no pre-application consultation since it involves fewer than 50 units and is on a site of less than 2ha.

For background on the site, see Ref. 08/01365/FUL; Issues 159, 222.

What do you think of this application? Let us know by email spurtle@hotmail.co.uk on Facebook Broughton Spurtle or Twitter @theSpurtle

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 Neale Gilhooley The link does work  Glad to see an eyesore going, after decades of gapsite ugliness there are now 3 separate developments about to go up within a few hundred metres of this spot. Bad planning?