Almost a third of new flats built at the Baltic Wharf caravan club on the Harbourside will be social housing. Council bosses have reaffirmed a pledge that 40 per cent of the 166 planned flats will be designated as affordable housing, with 50 flats rented at half the market rate.
Goram Homes is planning to build six blocks of flats at the caravan club on Cumberland Road, next to the Cottage pub, despite lingering concerns about the risk of flooding. The blocks will range from four to six storeys tall.
Questions were raised about whether the plans to provide affordable housing had been scaled back, during the economy and skills policy committee on July 29. This is partly as some affordable housing elsewhere is rented out at 80 per cent of the market rate, which is still very expensive.
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Professor John Tarlton said: “‘Affordable housing’ in that area is not affordable to most. Has that promise of social housing been revoked and is it now affordable housing?”
Councillors on a development control committee voted to grant planning permission in April. The committee were told that 50 flats would be for social rent, and 16 classed as shared ownership. There is an ambition to make all of the homes affordable, but this depends on getting external grants.
Simone Wilding, head of planning, said: “There’s no difference between what was discussed at the committee to what is being taken forward now. There’s no change.”
Labour Councillor Tom Renhard, former cabinet member for housing delivery, added: “It was put in the housing revenue account’s business plan to be 100 per cent council housing, with a split between social rent and shared ownership. That continues to be the case, subject to future decisions.”
Another issue is that Goram has applied for a government grant called the Brownfield Land Release Fund, to help pay to get the development under way. Before becoming a caravan club, the site was a timber yard, but campaigners dispute it should be classed as “brownfield” and called on the economy and skills policy committee to investigate their claims.
The plans involve chopping down 82 of the 101 trees on the site. But Goram has promised to plant 68 new trees on the site and 10 nearby, and pay the council for 150 new trees to be planted elsewhere.
In 2021 a group of women “married” dozens of trees on the site in a joint ceremony, in a bid to fight against the plans to chop them down. Despite the wedding, the plans still appear to be going ahead.