Sheffield houses: Developers win battle for £27m flats in leafy suburb due to 'pressing need'
Controversial plans for £27m flats in a leafy Sheffield suburb can go ahead because ‘need for housing is pressing’ an inspector has ruled.
PTA Developments has won permission for 53 flats, in buildings of up to five storeys, on the site of the former Gospel Meeting Hall, on Carter Knowle Road, near Mercia School.
The plan was unanimously refused by Sheffield City Council’s planning committee for failing to include a contribution for affordable housing.
But the company appealed to the government’s Planning Inspectorate and inspector H Jones found in its favour.
Sheffield City Council wanted an affordable housing contribution of £818,000 and a further, undisclosed amount, for the Community Infrastructure Levy.
But the inspector found the project ‘cannot viably provide’ an affordable housing contribution due to a fall in apartment values over the last year.
The inspector also said the council can demonstrate only three years’ worth of housing supply, ‘therefore, the shortfall is significant, and the need for housing is pressing.
‘With 53 apartments proposed, the contribution to housing supply in this case would be quite significant’.
Some 46 objections to the project were filed, with two supporting.
The decision comes as Sheffield City Council is under pressure to build more homes to meet government targets.
The government wants 38,000 homes and 654 acres for business by 2039.
The authority says it has put forward plans for 25,572 homes on brownfield sites and estimates a further 7,675 will be built on plots expected to become available in coming years, the majority of which will be brownfield.
It means “all developable and available land for housing within the existing urban areas - public and private - has already been identified” and “all options to build within non-green belt areas have been fully explored, or maximised.”
But it is not enough to meet the target and in April the authority unveiled plans to build 3,529 homes on 14 sites in green belt.