The amount of affordable housing in an upcoming development has been slashed and a community centre has been replaced with more homes.
On Tuesday evening (November 5), Watford Borough Council's Development Management Committee approved a series of tweaks to existing permission for the Avenues scheme, which forms part of the 1,000-home Watford Riverwell development.
Permission was granted for 192 homes at the Avenues site, by Vicarage Road Stadium and the Watford General Hospital multi-storey car park, with a community centre included in the designs.
Over the summer, the amended plan without a community centre and the number of affordable homes in the plan dropped from 62 to 23 was put forward.
It is hoped that the Watford Borough Council and Kier Property development will re-provide the community centre as part of a later stage of the overall project and the housing could be converted to affordable later on.
However, at the meeting, councillors said they had to accept that they would not have a planning reason that would be secure against legal challenge to block the amendments.
A viability assessment had been carried out formally finding that - due to inflation, a contractor going bust, regulation changes, and other factors - delivering the affordable homes as originally proposed would not be viable.
According to the applicant, replacing the community centre with three apartments would improve the overall viability. Meanwhile, there has been “no interest” in using the community centre as proposed over a year of marketing it.
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Kier Property has said it is still committed to delivering a community centre as part of a future project stage but it may be reconfigured and will be moved to better meet demand.
Other changes included increasing the proportion of two-bedroom homes while losing some one-bedroom flats.
It was stated that none of the councillors were comfortable seeing the loss of affordable housing, but it was ultimately voted through with only one abstention and no votes against.
There have been 62 homes delivered as part of the Avenues so far and 12 are currently under construction.
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