The worst kept secret of 2008 is now receiving press attention following continuing investigation by Planning Watch UK members.
At 9.05am Monday morning, Barrie Haycock, Planning Watch UK Chairman, contacted the Inverness Courier to make the newspaper aware of the latest turn of events following four years shambolic waste of tax payers money arising from the ego trips of those involved with the promotion of the Highland Housing Fair.
The action triggered frantic “pass the hot potato ” calls as Highland Council and Highland Housing Alliance frantically tried to put their “spin” on the latest twist of events, resulting in a statement being issued by beleagued Councillor Jean Urquhart, chairwoman of the Highland Housing Fair board, who finally admitted delaying the event was already looking like the most likely outcome, attempting to convince the enquiring reporter that the event would be delayed until 2010.
The news has since been reported on BBC websites, Moray Firth Radio and other media resources.
This latest twist of events was blamed on the “Credit Crunch” but it is thought that in reality there had been little financial support for the venture from Sponsors or firm sales of building plots concerned.
Susan Torrance, Chief Executive of Highland Housing Alliance had always claimed that the huge cost of promoting the event was adequatly covered by anticipated revenues from sponsors and sale of building plots, and public monies were not at risk.
It is thought that the organisers were so oblivious to reality that Event Insurance cover is unlikely to have been purchased leaving the huge investment of public monies totally exposed.
In November 2007, Mary Scanlon Conservative Party MSP forced Highland Council via a Freedom of Information request to reveal the extent of the costs incurred to date which were revealed to be around £1.92 Million and it is thought those costs have probably now increased to around £2.5 Million.
So the question is, will the event ever take place?
It was always claimed that the design expertise could influence developers in future years, but ignored the hard fact of life that major developers are only interested in maximising profitable return for any given parcel of land. Put simply, maximum build of the lowest cost box option to satisfy particular market end customer requirements.
The controlling factor will always be Government defined Building Regulations. Are they likely to change?
We don’t think that in the short term this is likely, so developers will continue to plough along regardless.
The irony is that not a single developer offered a suitable building site to Highland Housing Alliance for the event which demonstrates the importance that developers held for this proposed 100 odd unit development “passed off” as a Housing Fair.
All involved with the fiasco were forced to turn to a Green Wedge area of prime farmland and force through the planning consent. Tulloch Homes have been reported as profiting to the extent of £500,000 from the land transaction.
For the Fair to take place in 2010, building work would have to commence in the summer of 2009. Are developers likely to take a flyer on this given the downturn in the market?
We think highly unlikely, so just how are Highland Council and Highland Housing Alliance going to get out of this financial mess?
Watch this space…
By Lorna Paterson – Inverness Courier
Published: 22 July, 2008
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The site of the Highland Housing Fair at Balvonie Braes.
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THE controversial Highland Housing Fair is facing another major blow — it is set to be delayed for a year.
The exhibition of sustainable housing, billed as the first of its kind in Scotland, had been scheduled to take place in August 2009 at Balvonie Braes in Inverness.
However, it emerged yesterday that growing financial pressures and a downturn in the housing market meant the event will not now be staged until 2010.
Architects and developers from the south were briefed on the latest developments in Perth last week, while developers from the Highlands will be informed on Friday at a meeting in Inverness.The board will then meet to make a final decision although Councillor Jean Urquhart, chairwoman of the Highland Housing Fair board, admitted delaying the event was already looking like the most likely outcome.
She confirmed some developers involved with the project were facing financial difficulty and rather than putting pressure on them, the board would be making the recommendation to its partners.
In the worst case scenario she anticipates the delay to be for 12 months.
However, an on-line architects’ website said there were fears the project, led by Highland Housing Alliance, would lose momentum, particularly if it was postponed for more than a year.
Barrie Haycock, chairman of campaign group Planning Watch UK, while criticising organisers for not forecasting the impact of a declining housing market, also remained sceptical over whether the fair would now go-ahead.
For the event to take place in 2010, he said, the new homes would still need to be built next year, but with experts predicting it to be two years before the housing market recovers he sees this as unlikely. “It was obvious that any downturn in the housing market would put the project at risk,” he said.
He claimed it had collectively landed the tax payer with an enormous bill out of the rush to force it through the planning process.
Inverness MP Danny Alexander said it was a reminder of what impact the global credit crunch was having on the Highlands. “This is very disappointing,” he said. “The fair would have made a great contribution to the Highlands in terms of leading new ideas on how homes can be developed.
Councillor Urquhart (Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh) explained there had been no public announcement about the delay because it was still in consultation with developers and architects.
The housing fair, on an area of green-wedge land, will showcase the best in housing design, innovation and technology.
It has been dogged with controversy with allegations over the conduct of planning officers and unacceptable land deals playing their part but Councillor Urquhart stressed the event would go ahead.
“It makes me angry that people see this as some kind of trumped up nonsense that doesn’t need to happen. There is absolutely no suggestion this will be a cancellation,” she added.
l.paterson@inverness-courier.co.uk
Wilson’s Weekly Wrap
27 Jun 2008
Highland Housing – Fair?
On the surface, things seem to be going not too badly at the moment for the Highland Housing Fair, given the perverse local opposition encountered at the outset of the project and the high drop out rate of developers who found innovation and profit on a single house plot to be incompatible concepts. Down at the coalface, however, a number of the selected architects are finding the going considerably tougher.
Time is flying, and deadlines for Building Warrant applications, for example, are being missed due to the shifting economic times in which we live. Several of the projects are still without either client or developer, never mind a contractor, and with building work for most projects scheduled to be on site by late Autumn, some critical decisions need to be made at a more strategic level if we are not to see a half-constructed built landscape when the Fair opens its doors to the public next August.
A number of the project designs are predicated on imported components such as massive timber panels, now made infinitely more expensive by the £’s poor showing against the €uro and without significant alteration at this late stage, the houses may simply fail to emerge. Obviously the credit crunch was not on anyone’s radar when the idea of the Fair was first mooted, but life is not as it was a year ago and the project sponsors need to radically – and rapidly – revise the business plan if the Fair is to be a success.
In Finland, the first Housing Fairs were publicly-funded with small towns competing for the privilege to build: the model used here presumed that developers could be encouraged to innovate (without subsidy) and even profit from the construction of a single housing unit, a questionable approach anyway given the concept’s first outing in Scotland.
Now that the tectonic plates of banking have shifted inexorably to a position of financial denial to housing developers, the Fair’s initiators at government and public agency level need to dig deep into their pockets to make sure the project does not become an architectural disaster zone: should the project fail, there will be no second chance to learn from the experience. And, be assured, as the various previously-interested parties cover their tracks, it will be the architects that will end up carrying the can for their supposedly un-fundable designs. The reputational damage to the profession just doesn’t bear thinking about.
Wilson’s Weekly Wrap
http://www.architecturescotland.co.uk/news/685/Wilson’s_Weekly_Wrap.html
4 Jul 2008
Highland Housing Fair, Part Two
It’s not often I get to see such immediate impact from something I’ve written and in truth it was probably more serendipity than prescience on my part, but following my ‘warning light’ comments last week about next year’s Highland Housing Fair in Inverness, the organisers seem to have taken my advice to heart and moved with commendable rapidity to postpone the event by a year. This is far from being a bad thing – the number of developers unable to raise bank finance for their individual projects was reaching a dangerously high level and the people responsible for the Fair have made the only prudent move possible in the circumstances. Far better to delay than to fail ignominiously and in any case the reasons for the postponement can be readily understood by all. What developer was going to proceed – even had they been able to secure the necessary funding – with construction at current Inverness price levels when the bottom is dropping out of the housing market and likely to pummel the post-Housing Fair sales values?
That said, invoking Plan B can only be seen as a necessarily reactive move and the need for a well thought through Plan C is now pressing. With a shade more time on the delivery side of the project, the need to reduce construction costs without diminishing the design quality of the individual houses needs some real creative thinking. Consideration could, for example, be given to the implementation of a professional sponsorship programme focused on in-kind provision of materials and products for all of the houses planned for the site. Hardly complicated, it is one of the few routes to overall cost reduction that are available in the current economic climate, but it will require co-coordinated – and speedy – action rather than allowing the projects to individually stand or fall. 2010 is not that far away.
Highland Housing Fair Postponed for a Year
4 Jul 2008
steven.raeburn@carnyx.com
The Highland Housing Fair, billed as the first event of its kind in Scotland to showcase house designs of the future, has been unexpectedly postponed.
The event, scheduled to kick off in Inverness in a year’s time, was intended to be a showpiece event where over 50 conceptual, sustainable houses would be on display, will now take place in August 2010.
The downturn in the property market, the poor prospects for the resale of the homes to be constructed, and a lack of finance have been blamed for the postponement.
“A recommendation will be made to the Highland Housing Fair board to delay the Fair from August 2009 to August 2010, in recognition of the economic climate and the shortage of finance available to realise the ambitions of the developers who are committed to the project,” the organisers said in a statement.
“The recommendation will be made at the meeting of the Highland Housing Fair board which will take place in August 2008.”
It had been planned that the houses constructed for the fair would be available to buy, to become a “living community” once the fair ended.
Writing exclusively for architecturescotland.co.uk, Peter Wilson speculated that fear of the declining property market may have prompted the postponement.
“Far better to delay than to fail ignominiously and in any case the reasons for the postponement can be readily understood by all,” he writes.
“What developer was going to proceed – even had they been able to secure the necessary funding – with construction at current Inverness price levels when the bottom is dropping out of the housing market and likely to pummel the post-Housing Fair sales values?”
The housing association sector is in a very strong position to weather the credit crunch 
