The leader of the Opposition group on Scottish Borders Council has confirmed he was unaware of the existence of a report from consultants claiming the £200 million Tweedbank Masterplan proposals were 'unviable and undeliverable' when the authority sanctioned the purchase of Lowood estate last year for £11 million, including costs.
Councillor Stuart Bell (SNP) was reacting to Not Just Sheep & Rugby's coverage of a 68-page document commissioned by Middlemede Properties Ltd., owners of the Upper Pavilion salmon fishing beat next to Lowood. Our report, published yesterday, revealed the report's findings publicly for the first time.
A team of specialists headed by Jones Lang Lasalle (JLL) assembled the evidence for the report before lodging it with SBC in March 2018. The report records meetings with named officers at SBC prior to that.
But its contents do not appear to have featured much in the council's discussions about the Masterplan or the multi-million pound purchase of 109 acres at Lowood to facilitate controversial development proposals including upwards of 250 houses.
Councillor Bell, who raised serious concerns in December about the amount paid for the land - the sum was well above the undisclosed valuation placed on the estate by the District Valuer - will now demand an explanation as to why elected members were denied sight of the JLL report. He said he had been handed a copy of the document last Friday.
In a statement, he told us: "It seems to me that there have been two parallel processes running over the last year in regards to Tweedbank development. A sequence of Housing Supplementary Guidance and Tweedbank Master planning which JLL & Middlemede Properties were trying to contribute to; and a separate, parallel, process where the Council was purchasing the Lowood Estate. This second process was in private so although the JLL Report can be read as a very critical commentary on the land purchase; I don’t think that was the authors’ specific intent.
He had been unaware of the report and its conclusions when the decision was taken by Scottish Borders Council to purchase the Lowood Estate.
"I think that many other Borders Councillors were similarly in ignorance of it which is worrying given the significance of its conclusions (as the Not Just Sheep & Rugby blog dated 7th April indicates… ) that the Lowood proposal is over-development and not commercially viable. This does seems strange to me when the Report is dated March 2018 and I understand it was passed to Council officers."
"Given the potential significance of the analysis and conclusions I have written to SBC officers asking for clarification on why this Report was not brought immediately to the attention of Councillors. I am told by the originators of the Report that they are now sending a copy to all SBC Councillors."
He claimed that potentially of greater significance is the implication of the JLL Report for SBC’s development planning process going forward. The Council was in the middle of consulting on a Main Issues Report which would feed into the next iteration of the Local Development Plan.
"The core of JLL's argument is that the planned housing on the Lowood Estate is over-development and the report raises a number of environmental and landscape concerns", added Councillor Bell.
"Regardless of whether SBC own this land it has to act impartially when determining the preferred location of and scale of development. At present, because future Lowood Housing is included in the fully approved Supplementary Planning Guidance for Housing (Nov 2017), then subject to approval of specific applications this site can be developed in line with that Guidance.
"Time will tell whether SBC can impartially refute the planning logic of the JLL Report. If not that could be grounds for objections to on-going development on that site and potentially place limits on its inclusion on the next Local Development Plan. As the new landowner I think that SBC is going to have to be, and be seen to be, very even handed in how it now considers the JLL Report."
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