A DEVELOPER is taking their case on an affordable housing site in the Tamar Valley to appeal.

Houses at the former Bridge View Nursery site in Calstock have been boarded up for more than six months.

Earlier this year, the couple behind the development, Michael Wight and Adele Fulner, said that they had run up many hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt.

They said there was no option but to close the site down, returning deposits on the open market housing already constructed and with sales agreed.

Their company, Bridge View LL10 Ltd, has gone into part receivership, on the Calstock asset.The developer has argued that delays caused by Cornwall Council led them to lose their affordable housing provider and that they could not find another.

They say that rising costs due to the difficult topography of the site and the interest accruing on loans meant it became financially unviable to build affordable housing at Bridge View, and that the local authority would not listen to their request to remove the Section 106 condition.

But in its statement to the planning inspector, Cornwall Council sets out its timeframe of events. It says that it agreed a reduction from 15 affordable homes to ten.

To remove the affordable housing altogether would have meant changing the whole face of the scheme, for which a new public consultation would have been required, says the council: it says the developer would not agree to a fresh consultation period and so a stalemate was reached.

The appeal case could hinge on the viability of the site – whether or not it is reasonable, given the current cost of building, to expect a developer to fulfil the obligation to build affordable housing in this location.

Cornwall’s affordable housing officer will attend the hearing to argue that Mr Wight and Ms Fulner have “failed to indicate with robust evidence that the affordable housing provision should be reduced to zero”.

Calstock councillor Alastair Tinto has stated that the village does not need more large, expensive properties and that the reason the local council originally gave its support to the plans was so that the parish would gain much-needed affordable homes.

A key point made by both local councillors and Cornwall Council is that the developer was in breach of the rules when it started building open market homes at Bridge View before an affordable housing contribution was secured.

Cllr Tinto said that viability assessments were being used as a way for developers to absolve themselves of responsibility.

“This situation is just typical of the system of planning we have at the moment that tries to build affordable housing via the private developers. It just doesn’t work.”

Cllr Tinto is encouraging residents to attend the appeal hearing on October 15 and to make their views known to the planning inspector.

A separate company registered with Michael Wight and Adele Fulner as directors, Construction Partners Ltd, is still listed as active. The couple had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.