Fife Council 'holding back homes' over £650k road demand

Mrs Linda Tinson has been left frustrated by Fife Council's insistence that £650,000 of road and pavement improvements are needed for a proposed development at Masterton Farm.

Her agent, Joe Fitzpatrick, previously argued that the demands were "unreasonable" and would make the housing plans off Masterton Road "unviable".

Planning permission in principle is in place, for an unspecified number of new homes, but his attempts to persuade the council to drop two conditions was unsuccessful and his request was refused in August.

Fife Council have insisted that, as part of plans to build homes at Masterton Farm, upgrades must be carried out on Masterton Road. (Image: Google Maps)

An appeal has now been submitted to the planning and environmental appeals division.

It states: "The council has now accepted that the financial burden imposed on development of the site due to the cost of the road is preventing implementation of the permission and has, in recognition of this point, introduced additional conditions that would allow this requirement to be set aside if a smaller scale development were to be brought forward.

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"The obvious response to this is, should the council not, instead of seeking to prevent development, be seeking to explore alternative options which would allow the larger development of up to 40 units to proceed in a phased manner?"

The first condition in question states that a section 75 legal agreement should be reached on developer contributions for affordable housing, education, strategic transport intervention measures and play provision.

Mr Fitzpatrick said his client was "absolutely and unquestionably not in agreement" and argued that, as a brownfield site, it should be exempt from developer contributions.

In the appeal statement, he refutes the council's assertion that more than half of the site is greenfield.

The second condition states that the road, from the front of the site to the junction with Skylark Road, must be upgraded to a "minimum carriageway width" of 5.5 metres with a two-metre wide footway, which would cost an estimated £650,000.

Mr Fitzpatrick has argued that it was an "unreasonable" request as it imposed costs solely on his client, when there was another development site further down the road that would also benefit.

In the appeal he stated: "The appellant just wants to make progress without the financial burden which is preventing such progress, on both sites, and fully accepts that in the future there will be a requirement for more significant improvements to the Masterton Road cul-de-sac."

He had previously suggested the work could be "phased" to ensure costs were shared but the council said they wouldn't "support any kind of phased approach" and insisted that improvements to the "narrow and substandard stretch of road without footways" were required.

Proposals to develop land at Masterton Farm have been on the go since 2008 but they've never managed to progress.

Mr Fitzpatrick said his client has been "forced to seek repeated renewals of planning permission for the site" with potential developers pulling out once they discovered the financial implications of the scheme.