Covid to make £220 million Lowood scheme "even more difficult"

EXCLUSIVE by EWAN LAMB

Scottish Borders Council's £220 million development project on the Lowood Estate, near Melrose, has been savaged by a planning consultant who claims the paperwork is so fundamentally flawed that the local authority will be open to legal challenges in the courts.

Last Friday saw the deadline for submissions in a 12-week consultation process centred on SBC's draft Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) for the ambitious raft of proposals at Lowood, adjacent to Tweedbank village.

Central to the scheme will be the construction of hundreds of new houses although the exact number has not been specified in the council's document.

The Lowood country estate was bought by SBC from the Hamilton family for £9.6 million in November 2018 with claims the local housing market was buoyant and there would be a healthy demand from developers.

But critics warn the Covid-19 lockdown's impact on the construction industry could kill short-term demand stone dead. There have even been suggestions the estate might become an ever increasing burden on local government finances in the Borders.

On Friday councillors received a hard-hitting submission from David Bell, an Edinburgh-based planning consultant acting for Middlemede Properties Ltd. (MPL), the owners of the Tweed's Upper Pavilion salmon fishery right next door to Lowood. Middlemede is particularly alarmed at the sheer scale of house-building proposed by SBC.

One of the strongest assertions outlined by Mr Bell in a 10-page dissection of the draft SPG relates to the housing demand in the area.

He writes: "The brief [to the council's own consultants]’s objectives included: Provide clear guidance on delivery mechanisms for the development of the site; and propose a scale and mix of uses that are deliverable in the context of the prevailing and anticipated market conditions.

"With regard to the above, no supporting documentation it would seem has been provided to the consultants in terms of development viability and housing market matters. 

"As a result of the COVID-19 emergency the market conditions (which we understand through published analysis were already endemically weak in the Scottish Borders) are now much more problematic.  For a site such as this with extensive under-capacity of essential infrastructure provision (education, drainage, access etc) this will make delivery very difficult."

Mr Bell adds that it had been stated the SPG must ensure “a high quality and appropriate development is delivered.  It is important that the development proposals within the SPG are realistic, deliverable and free from significant / major constraints”.  

But, he says, no mention is made in the draft SPG to matters of deliverability.  This is a fundamental failing in the SPG and is not acceptable given the serious reservations on commercial viability.

The MPL submission also seeks to pick holes in the idea of building 300 or more houses on Lowood.

It says: "At the end of section two (of the SPG) there is the following statement: “It is noted that although the indicative site capacity for housing is 300 units, it is likely the overall site can satisfactorily accommodate an increased number…” 

"This is a sweeping assertion: there is no evidence to support the “likelihood” that the site can take more than 300 units.  Indeed, when there is no housing market information available to the consultants how can this assumption be carried forward with any confidence?  Housing market guidance will be essential to inform matters such as house types, phasing / likely take up rates etc.  It would seem the site design approach has been undertaken in a vacuum from this type of information."

Mr Bell points out that in the original masterplan for Tweedbank, a fundamental element was the proposed “Tweedbank Park” which was zoned in an extensive area east of Lowood House and which included the majority of the policy woodland and open ground extending down to the River Tweed and incorporating the existing Lowood access road.

"However, the draft SPG now proposes extensive residential zones and indeed commercial development over the vast majority of the area that was proposed as the Tweedbank Park in the  masterplan.  This is a fundamental difference and is not considered acceptable.  The loss of this parkland, an important buffer between proposed development and the River Tweed SAC and SSSI underscores the nature of the proposed overdevelopment of the site that would result."  

The Lowood site was, says Mr Bell, specifically allocated to address a shortfall in the five year effective housing land supply identified by the Scottish Ministers.  Having been allocated through the promotion of SPG the expectation was that the site would start to deliver housing by 2022 and the latest HLA (Housing Land Availability) reflects that expectation.  

"Against that background it is incumbent upon the SPG to set out a phasing arrangement that demonstrates how the first batch of housing units will be delivered on site by 2022."

Mr Bell concludes: "If these matters (outlined in the submission) are not addressed, then the legal advice MPL has obtained is that the process of preparing detailed planning guidance that the Council has embarked upon is fundamentally flawed, thereby rendering any future decision on the part of the Council to adopt the SPG based on this current approach being open to challenge in the courts."