HOUSING

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Crossview Investments, of Derby Road, Borrowash, has submitted an application to Derby City Council to knock down a corner detached property in Burnside Street, Alvaston, and build 13 flats. The development would be a three-storey building, with a four-storey section in Curzon Lane. There would be six one-bedroom and seven two-bedroom flats in an L-shaped block as well as 14 parking spaces. In a council report about the application, officers recommended the proposals be approved, subject to certain conditions. They said the developers should give a financial contribution to the council, which would be used to provide public open space elsewhere in Derby. It is also advised that the mature ash tree be kept and that the development would not cause traffic congestion. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

Peak Dale Developments Ltd, a company set up by Derbyshire businessmen Phil Loydall, of Darley Abbey, and Mike Wrigley, of Ashbourne, has revealed that it has bought the Palm Court restaurant. Mr Loydall said that they planned to demolish the building and replace it with 24 luxury two and three-bedroom apartments. The restaurant has been a popular venue since 1971.

Mr Loydall is chairman of the Upperdale Group, based in Colombo Street, Derby, a company which recycles domestic appliances and buys and sells properties. Mr Wrigley has been a property developer for many years. Councillor Phillip Hickson said, "It's disappointing that another long-established business is disappearing to make room for yet more luxury apartments. Developers are ruining the special nature of Allestree by cramming it full of intensive developments." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

Peak Dale Developments has sold the Palm Court Restaurant site for about £500,000 more than the £1.25m it paid for it less than two years ago. Business partners Phil Loydall and Mike Wrigley put the site back on the market with an asking price of £1.8m. A sale has been agreed but the original plans will still stand. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Dec/06)

Derby's ruling cabinet may well have been perfectly within its rights to have kept under wraps its plans to sell four sites for low-cost housing. And if its proposals go through, as expected, it may prove to be very sound policy, leading to the creation of affordable homes and generating cash to build and repair council housing stock. But the fact that the authority chose to afford the proposals no publicity will inevitably be seen as a ploy to avert, or at least minimise, local opposition to development.

As usual, commercial sensitivity is pleaded as the reason for the secrecy. But that cannot be used as a smokescreen to obscure such matters of public concern. Maybe the housing associations involved should not yet be identified on the above grounds, but if the land is owned by the council, it is owned by the people of Derby and they have a right to their say on its use. It is only paying lip service to local democracy to have so-called area panels around the city and then to keep residents in the dark on issues such as property development.

A large proportion of homes for sale in Derby, less than £100,000 and 10 years old, are currently sold as investments, or, as is the current vernacular, to the buy-to-let market. Investors have found they own an appreciating capital asset that provides a steady income in a market where their rate of return is far better than investments in the stock market, for example. However, the downside is that there is an ever-decreasing stock of properties that are both affordable and suitable for first-time buyers, particularly young couples wanting to set up their first home in the city. Of course, in a free society everybody should be able to invest their money where they see fit.

My objection is that building societies, set up as mutuals for the benefit of their members, are now lending money for buy-to-let at preferential rates of interest. They are thereby doing a disservice to young members who are saving for their first home. Building societies should restrict their lending to would-be home owners and not those wishing to make an investment out of a property purchase. As a father and grandfather, I fear that our children will never be able to afford their own home. Even those that can will not then be able to afford to have children, given their large mortgage repayments. Peter J. Newton

Richard Hartley, the owner of Midland Car Parts in Parcel Terrace, submitted outline plans to Derby City Council to build 142 apartments in place of a warehouse built less than a year before to replace one destroyed by arsonists. The application also included a shop, a café, underground parking, garden squares and transport links. Mr Hartley's agent, Jonathan Jenkin, said, "Having built the new warehouse after the fire, he then found that his business was changing all the time and he didn't have enough space. In order to fund this move, we're putting in this planning application for the site." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

Developer Miller Homes was granted permission in 2004 to build 155 homes on the site of former convent grounds in Broadway. This was despite many objectors who claimed the development would create traffic problems, cause overcrowding and destroy protected trees. Now, Miller Homes, in conjunction with construction firm Taylor Woodrow, has submitted a new planning application to Derby City Council for a total of 218 homes on the site, a 40% increase on the approved scheme, and say it is in response to the market.

Darley ward councillor Martin Repton, council's cabinet member for planning and transportation, said, "Some people have likened this to a Trojan horse. There's the suspicion from many of my constituents that the original application was a staging post and that they are squeezing more housing and more profit from that site." Robert Hepwood, Miller Homes' planning and technical director, said he understood why people claimed the new proposal was a Trojan horse, but said, "There's no truth to that." (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

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