Months after the Highland Housing Fair closed little has changed with the development in Inverness, Highlands, Scotland.
Properties remain incomplete, landscaping leaves a lot to be desired and roads wait for Tarmac.
Not surprisingly, properties remain unsold and given the current financial climate it remains to be seen how those who organised the shambles will repay the reputed cost of £6Million funded mainly by the long suffering tax payer.
We are now told a “sales drive” will take place later this year – at what cost and who is going to pay?
Quite frankly, those who promoted the benefits of the event should be jailed. Little concern was demonstrated as the costs of the fiasco rocketed and this at a time that the Directors of Highland Council were fully aware that the council had massively overspent and was largely running out of control.
The term “Development at any Cost” springs to mind. The NIMBY’S who insisted that the location was suitable and would benefit the region should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves – will they all be eventually taken to court? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain, when the full financial facts are forced out the information will generate massive criticism.
Those who campaigned against the event have proven to be very accurate with their thoughts about the issue, yet still Susan Torrance and her team of supporters are in denial.
The only winner is Tulloch Homes, reported to have made a cool £500,000 profit on the sale of the land involved to Highland Housing Alliance!
Earlier this year, it emerged that taxpayers handed Inverness building firm Tulloch Homes a profit when land on the outskirts of the city was sold to the organisers of the fair.
Tulloch Homes bought around 40 acres of agricultural land at Balvonie Braes for £850,000 and sold it with one extra acre nine months later to the council-funded Highland Housing Alliance for £1,350,000.
Barrie Haycock, chairman of Planning Watch UK, said he was outraged by the way the Balvonie Braes project had been handled.
“I think the whole affair is a complete disgrace and indicates the contempt which the Scottish Government and the Highland Council demonstrate to the community and the planning process in general,” he said.
It transpired hundreds of brochures — designed to attract government support — had to be destroyed because they contained inaccurate information relating to community facilities claimed to be in place, but not provided at Milton of Leys.
This latest twist has prompted furious opponents to demand sackings at the highest management level.
Editor
Published: 18 January, 2011, Inverness CourierORGANISERS of Scotland’s Housing Expo are preparing for a major event to help boost the sale of 24-eco homes so that £6 million of public money can be repaid.
Highland Housing Alliance, which led the expo project, has a deadline of April 2012 to sell the houses – some worth in excess of £300,000 – which are still on the market five months after the event closed.
The Expo, a development of 52 homes at Balvonie Braes in Inverness, showcasing sustainable and energy efficient design, was open to the public throughout August last year and attracted more than 30,000 visitors.
Yesterday it was revealed only one of the 24 homes built by the alliance has been sold but the organisation’s chief executive Susan Torrance is unperturbed.
Cash from each sale is to be returned to the public purse as part of an agreement with the Scottish Government, which underwrote the controversial housing scheme with £6 million of taxpayer’s money.
As part of the deal, if the alliance fails to sell the homes, they will be converted to affordable housing either through low-cost ownership or affordable rented accommodation.
Mrs Torrance remains confident all the homes will sell by the time the deadline comes around.
“I would be extremely surprised if it takes longer than 18 months,” she said.
“Not a lot of new houses are being built but people are still looking for new homes.”
Whilst sales have been slow she revealed there have been expressions of interest from buyers in all the homes with some proving more popular than others.
She went on to reveal plans for a major event in April which would properly launch and market the expo homes for sale.
Scotland’s Housing Expo at the city’s Balvonie Braes where 24 eco-homes remain unsold. Gary Anthony The alliance is waiting until spring because some work, such as laying roads and landscaping, is still to take place and it wants the site to be completely finished.
Prolonged snow and ice over recent weeks has caused some delays to the work schedule.
“What we want to do is really show off the houses to their best in April when all the landscaping is complete,” said Mrs Torrance, explaining until recently some of the houses also still required work.
Ideas for the April launch, which will form part of the alliance’s marketing strategy, include staging a farmer’s market, fashion show, music event and competition giveaways at the site.
Mrs Torrance also revealed plans were in the pipeline to host a professionals’ day on 18th March for architects, developers and other interested parties who may have missed the exhibition in August.
“Since the expo we have had umpteen folk wanting to see around the site,” she said.
“This will be the last chance for folk to see around the houses.”
The remainder of the expo development is made up of a further 20 affordable homes, built for local housing associations, and eight private houses funded directly by developers to the tune of £2.3 million.
Albyn Housing Society has sold 10 of its 11 homes and O’Brien and Robertson are understood to have sold each of their plots.
Courier reader comments:
Wee jamie
The Expo was a scam from the very start.
I visited with an architect. His opinion – Houses – Rubbish.
JackThe Expo site is never going to feel like a proper housing estate. The houses are too close together
MmmI bought one of the Albyn houses and feel very lucky. It’s very energy efficient and a great opportunity for myself and partner to get on the property ladder in such difficult times. The site is far from complete and it does feel like we’re living in a show room. We have ‘visitors’ constantly peering through our windows which has become very tiresome. I don’t think people realise that there are families living on site now.
StewieIt looks like the Expo is being EXPOsed as a bad idea!
Be specific“Umpteen”?. Such a comment is almost as much use as the imaginary 30,000 plus figure that those responsible for this shambles are still touting. Any chance of some ACTUAL accounts related to the none Common Good Fund income generated before April? Take away the £60,000 grant and the double counted free children used to inflate the numbers and the Expo is exposed as a joke.
JackPrepare to be discussing this in 18 months. The public will NOT take out mortgages to purchase experiemental houses on a cramped experimental estate which will contain a number of social housing units. The resale value of these egotistical follies is being indicated by the fact that the only one sold to date was bought by someone with a financial involvement in the project.
Another MoL ResidentTo recover £6M they would need to average £222,222 PROFIT on each of the 27 houses to recoup the monies spent. Clearly the cost of construction and the running of the event has to be covered.
Will the public purse see all its money back?
JamesI wish Mrs Torrance the best of luck in selling these houses, but with £300,000 a person could buy a very nice house in Crown or down by the river, so it’s difficult to see how these houses at Balvonie will take preference to such houses which are also on the market, despite what Susan Torrance says. Hopefully, for the sake of the public purse, the properties sell.
DeniseThis is a disgrace of monumental proportions.
AnonWatch for the begging bowl going to the Common Good Fund once more.
M.O.L. Resident.Were all these extra openings and events part of the original plans for the Housing Expo? Or are we now expected to suffer more disruption with visitors parking on the side of the roads or better yet, on the actual pavements without any say at all. I remember the words “No extended opening” being used at the end of the actual show, this sounds very much to me like the Housing Expo is being reopened. Lets hope they can sell some of the houses and pay the taxpayers back the £6 million they owe.
BMac“…Yesterday it was revealed only one of the 24 homes built by the alliance has been sold but the organisation’s chief executive Susan Torrance is unperturbed…”It’s wonderful how unconcerned one can be when it’s public money.
BogbainGood Luck! to Ms Torrance with her marketing scheme. If it is half as good as the one that she executed for David Sutherland whereby all the new home builders had to contribute to the cost of his Milton of Leys link road then her latest scheme should land in clover.
For the uninitiated. Mr Sutherland’s Tulloch builders could not build more than 600 homes at Milton of Leys without building a new link road. Part of a planning condition. Enter Susan Torrance, ex Tulloch director who fronted the housing fair development for the benefit of Suds. Suds had bought the Balvonie farm fields for way above the agricultural rate in the belief that HC planners would nod another development through the system.
But up sprang disenchanted Milton of Leys Tulloch Home buyers who joined forces with Bogbain and exposed anomalies in the Highland Council planners system.A new Highland Council planning committee was formed which owed Suds no favours, so that the whole housing fair farce got a rough ride in the media.
Can Susan now explain to taxpayers just how much each new housebuilder has had to contribute to the cost of Tulloch’s new Milton of Leys link road. The question has been asked many times before but Susan and Suds remain silent. And why not? Nice little bit of Inverness business.
laxdaleone word albatross
