Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

East of Trowbridge development - developer asks for concessions.
As part of the permission, several community 'benefits' were required to be provided by the developer. These included sports pitches and public open space, provision of a shop and a new primary school, construction of the extension of Leap Gate through to West Ashton Road, provision of money to build the Hilperton Relief Road (HRR), and 30% of the new dwellings had to be affordable housing.

Subsequently, the developers realised that they might not make enough money from the project, mainly due to the cost of the HRR which they themselves had applied for permission to build. They therefore asked WWDC to enter into an 'open book' scheme whereby it could be 'proved' that poor old Persimmon wouldn't be making their usual obscene mark-up on the deal.

That scheme has now been completed and it claims that Persimmon would make a loss of £3.6million at August 2008 figures if they had to provide all these amenities.

A report to go to the WWDC planning committee next Thursday proposes some concessions. The most important changes are an increase in the number of houses from 550 to 650, (to be achieved by building smaller houses so the actual size of the development stays the same) and a reduction of social housing to 25%. This would give 162 affordable homes, with an additional cash contribution towards a small number of 'shared ownership' properties to be built off-site.

It will be interesting to see how compliant the planning committee is to this sob story. Whilst the houses are needed to meet Government targets it will be interesting to see who raises the point that Persimmon is already sniffing around to ascertain what the reaction would be if they applied to build a few houses on the Trowbridge side of the HRR. Perhaps this should be factored into any decision on cutting Persimmon some slack on the EoT development? Also, has it occured to Persimmon that if they can't make any money from EoT then they can always walk away and find other fields to concrete over?

The committee meeting takes place at the Bradley Road offices of WWDC starting at 7.00pm. Anyone wishing to speak must register before 6.55pm.