THE developer building 59 homes next to Townhill Country Park has agreed to pay Fife Council almost £600,000 as part of the deal.
Lochay Homes, who have planning permission for 10 acres of farmland to the north of Kent Street in Dunfermline, will stump up the cash for education and transportation contributions.
Planning permission was granted in March but this was subject to 29 conditions and a legal agreement being reached with the Edinburgh builder.
That's now been signed and Lochay said they planned to start work this week.
In a statement the firm said: “The vision is to create a high quality, sustainable extension onto the northern edge of Dunfermline, making best use of connections to existing facilities within the city; localised facilities and amenities in the village of Townhill; and localised recreational routes and resources, such as Townhill Country Park and Town Loch, which lie immediately to the north.”
The cash demands are to help alleviate capacity problems at local schools, which their development will contribute to, and transportation improvements in the locality, as the new homeowners will add more traffic onto an already busy roads network.
Lochay will pay £65,854 towards classroom solutions at Townhill Primary School, £10,300 for St Margaret’s RC Primary School and £286,671 for high schools in the Dunfermline area.
They'll also hand over £229,276 for 'strategic transport interventions'.
A quarter of the homes, 15, will be for affordable housing and the firm will be asked for an unspecified contribution towards the upgrade of the Whitefield Road / Halbeath Road / Linburn Road junction and towards Halbeath Road improvements.
The council had previously refused an application for 92 homes on the site, submitted by a separate company, Glasgow-based MacTaggart and Mickel, but it was approved after an appeal to the Scottish Government in July 2020.
However it's now Lochay Homes who are taking the development on.
The site is between Kent Street and Townhill Country Park and last month the council agreed to drop one of the planning conditions, relating to flooding, as councillors agreed it was "not reasonable".
The firm will build their houses over the next three years and they will include 11 bungalows, with two-, three- or four-bedrooms, and 33 houses with three or four bedrooms.
Access will be from a new junction with Townhill Road. A council report concluded: “The development offers a positive solution to the site’s development, delivering new homes, including a wide range of house types (including affordable housing and bungalows) designed to meet established needs.
"This is all positive and worthy of full support.”
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