Doubts over homes plans

PROPOSALS for new houses in Dunfermline may not go ahead after Fife Council insisted on an estimated £650,000 of road and pavement improvements.

The agent for Mrs Linda Tinson, who wants to build new homes at Masterton Farm, said the demands were “unreasonable” and would make the development “unviable”.

Joe Fitzpatrick had asked the west and central planning committee to drop two conditions but last week the councillors refused his request.

It’s a long running saga with the first application to build homes on the site, which is off Masterton Road and measures just over a hectare, submitted in November 2008.

Mr Fitzpatrick said his client has been “forced to seek repeated renewals of planning permission for the site” with interested builders pulling out once they discovered the financial implications of the scheme.

There is planning permission in principle for an unspecified number of houses on the site but it is subject to conditions and a section 75 legal agreement to ensure the provision of developer contributions for affordable housing, education, strategic transport intervention measures and play provision.

Mr Fitzpatrick stated that his client should not have to comply with two of them.

One condition requires the road, from the front of the site to the junction with Skylark Road, to be upgraded to a “minimum carriageway width” of 5.5 metres and a two-metre wide footway.

These improvements are estimated to cost £650,000 and would make the development “unviable”, with Mr Fitzpatrick adding that it was an “unreasonable” request as it imposed costs solely on his client, when there was another development site further down the road that would also benefit.

He suggested the work could be “phased” to ensure costs were shared.

There were nine members of the public who wrote in support of the application and one who opposed the proposals

owever, case officer Brian Forsyth said Fife Council “doesn’t support any kind of phased approach” and that improvements to the road, which he described as a “narrow and substandard stretch of road without footways”, were necessary.

Mr Forsyth said the condition “doesn’t seek to impose costs in any particular direction.

He added: “It’s open to the developer to enter into cost-sharing discussions with others or commit to a more limited development of the site, potentially to avoid the need for any road improvements.”

Asked what kind of size that would be, he said he would need to consult colleagues in transportation but commented: “You’re maybe looking at a handful of dwellings, but that’s very much a guess.”

Mr Fitzpatrick also claimed that the site, which includes a number of.disused agricultural buildings, was brownfield and therefore his client should be exempt from the condition requiring her to pay developer contributions.

But Mr Forsyth said: “This is all refuted in my report”, with the council stating that the site was “part brownfield and part greenfield”.

His recommendation that planning permission in principle was renewed, with the conditions remaining in place, was agreed by the committee.