A landowner has urged Dundee City Council to focus its attentions on “deliverable” development sites and that means looking east.
The withdrawal of Bett Homes from the Western Gateway has prompted Jim Thomson, owner of North Grange Farm, north of Monifieth, to call on the city council to include his 68-acre property in the local development plan for housing.
North Grange is in the easternmost corner of Dundee and next to Ethiebeaton Park, and he believes it represents a logical location for future development and would complement existing new housing on the A92 corridor.
He has unveiled plans for a 300-home estate which he says will deliver 1,000 jobs during the construction stage and beyond.
It would be another major housing project for that part of the city with Bett Homes, who don’t want to go to Western Gateway, wanting to build 270 homes in a venture with Taylor Wimpey at the Linlathen estate of Hugh Niven.
Mr Thomson said the Eastern Villages concept on the A92 was being successfully developed and North Grange would have no physical constraints and would not need public funding.
“This is not meant as a criticism of the allocation of the Western Gateway or other greenfield and brownfield sites, but as we have seen with the vast majority of similar strategic growth areas designed during the decades of the housing boom, they are simply not coming forward as anticipated,” he said.
“The ability to deliver the required number and variety of homes to meet current and forecast demands marks out successful housing markets, and Dundee needs to take control of this situation now.”
Dundee will need a wide variety of housing geographically and in terms of site characteristics to meet expected demand up to and beyond 2020, and he said North Grange would contribute towards this flexibility.
There are significant large land allocations for housing around the city but he believed these would take time due to ground conditions and market demand, while North Grange can deliver quickly.
Dundee City Council owns 60% of the land allocated for future residential development. This could be seen as an advantage, but could also be a minefield in terms of procurement and the glut of similar sites to the market.
All over Scotland councils are redesigning their growth strategies, sometimes under the direction of Scottish Government Reporters following examination of proposed development plans, to introduce flexibility into their housing land supply.
This would encourage smaller scale developments, just like the villages which Dundee has pioneered along part of the A92, to come forward in the immediate future.
Mr Thomson said councillors can take control of the situation in their own area and shape the local development plan by introducing sites which they are confident can come forward in the short term.
Alternatively, they could be instructed to do so by the Reporters.
“We are not looking to replace the current allocations, but Dundee must look to supplement them with other sites across the city to ensure a range of choices in location, house type and tenure rates,” said Mr Thomson.
Dundee City Council insisted at the weekend there is interest from housebuilders in Western Gateway despite Betts’ withdrawal.
aargo@thecourier.co.uk